even in old age
in misery and at the end
like an only child enthused to have been so born
i will be haughty and arrogant
i’ll dress up spending my last few cents
thanks to a lesson from my illustrious friend
when she was down on her luck
a black blouse a black skirt
they’ll never realize it’s the same one
i’ll play hostess with meat bought on credit
i’ll fill the bottles of good wines long finished
with cheap wine
don’t ever wait for the end
you’ll only see it in my bathroom mirror
Juana Bignozzi (1937-2015) was an Argentine poet, translator, and journalist. Thanks to the efforts of a later generation of poets that she mentored before she died in 2015, Bignozzi’s work has come back into focus. Among her many publications are Los límites (1960), Mujer de cierto orden (1967), Interior con poeta (1993), La ley tu ley (2000), and Las poetas visitan a Andrea del Sarto (2014).
Anayvelyse Allen-Mossman is a writer and translator from New York. Her work has appeared in Triquarterly, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Hyperallergic, and Fence. She received her PhD in Latin American and Iberian Cultures from Columbia University in 2021 with a dissertation on labor in Argentina’s sugar belt.