The guys would leave us behind by Daiana Henderson, translated by Lucina Schell


 
 
The guys would leave us behind
and go out hunting in their pickup truck.
Us girls would remain chatting about nothing.
The stories they would bring back were always the same.
El Flaco told me one of the nights
they saw two eyes shining, Facu aimed
and put a bullet in the forehead of a kitten.
He went to look at it, held it up by the tail
and softly laid it on the side of the road.
He told me that Franco, who is
the most macho of them all, cried.
They didn’t say anything about it and we
didn’t notice because the hunting
stories were the same as ever:
it was always night and cold,
an exaggerated climax in the middle
and an emotionless conclusion.
But now I know that time
the three returned silently in the truck
while we put on our makeup to go out.
 
 
 
Daiana Henderson was born in Paraná, Argentina in 1988. She has lived in the city of Rosario since 2007. Her last books of poetry include Un foquito en medio del campo (2013), Humedal (2014) and Caja de herramientas (Chapbook, 2016). She is co-author of several poetry anthologies, which include 40 velocidades. Colección de poemas en bicicleta (2014) and 53/70: poesía argentina del siglo XXI (2015). She co-directs the editorial Neutrinos, specializing in contemporary poetry, and she has been a member of the curatorial team of the International Poetry Festival of Rosario since 2013.

Lucina Schell works in international rights for the University of Chicago Press and is founding editor of Reading in Translation. She is a member of the Third Coast Translators Collective, and translates poetry from the Spanish. She has translated the chapbook of Daiana Henderson’s poetry So That Something Remains Lit (Cardboard House Press), and the first full-length collection of poetry by Miguel Ángel Bustos is forthcoming in her translation from co•im•press in 2018.