Poems (Week 7-11)

Sleepless Homeland by Carmen Boullosa
Did we lose you in a game of dice?

Did you escape from us in one snort?
In which junkie’s syringe did you become trapped, my Homeland?
Maybe some Nordic addict’s?
When did they brand you with the mark of the pill that gives short-lived pleasure?
I’m addicted to you, stamped with your indelible mark.
My Homeland,
once eloquent, now you stutter,
stutter daily,
ever more alive,
voracious, arrogant
like the mouth of an open wound!
In the shadows you behave like a trollop,

you sell each part of yourself for the pleasure of others,
wearing dark glasses,
you sing along to the accordion and tamborines,
until you’re hoarse.
In bed you feign pleasure but feel pain.
(And sometimes you make music without poisoning others with your own flesh.)
(And sometimes, my Homeland, you laugh without making yourself hoarse.)
¿Quo vadis?
Where did you fall, sleepless homeland,

like the star in the story,
like the drunk woman who crashed into a lamppost?
Your flesh is denser,
more austere,
more solid,
more real,
can be compressed into a thimble,
or the embroidery on that blouse.
No doubt you exist, no question.

But where are you?
Through the smoke of a war that sullies us all,
in which no one
but mercenaries
participate
—the bullets that fly have no conviction,
they’re on the payroll of the fed, the state, some drug lord . . .
rounds of bullets for hire.
You’re slipping away from us, Homeland in flight.

(Your honeyed
breath
of rounds of bullets for hire.)
(Your breath of garlic and chocolate and chiles.)
(Your pestle-and-mortar breath

of garlic and honey and chiles and pepper and cinnamon.)
(Your breath of sacrificial stone,
of blood,of a heart still beating.)
I love her anyway
My land, my water, my roots, my tree trunks and flowers,

stony, feminine islet,
mine, mine, as only you can be,
quintessential Mother,
I call to you from another island without stones,
or serpents,
where the eagle and the hedgehog work together,
planning to devour you.
...
(Cactus!
We have made cactus
stew of my Homeland!
A delicious soup of pleasures
for foreigners.
Cactus: ecstasy, meth, and everything else.)
From Sleepless Homeland (Madrid: Hiperion, 2011).

Notes on a Zombie Cataclysm - by Luis Felipe Fabre
(Opening Song)
Hey, sweetheart, don’t go
picnicking in the cemetery:
don’t go
drinking in the cemetery:
don’t go doing drugs in the cemetery:
don’t dress and make up like a Goth
tonight.
Because things
are turning weird: because they found
just the arm
while the rest of the body remains a mystery;
because they found
just the ear
of another mystery
and teeth from the devil knows whose smile;
because things are turning hardcore:

hey, honey, listen
to this idiot ditty: don’t go
dancing in the cemetery:
don’t go dancing
in the cemetery: don’t go

dancing in the cemetery: stay here with me
tonight.
*
A hand emerging from a grave
the hand of a corpse that in the end proves to be undead

or not quite dead: merely putrified:
the hand of a zombie:
the hand that emerges at the end of the film

to proclaim that the end is not the end:
there’s going to be a second episode
the hand
that sprouted from the earth
like a monstrous flower
from a pit hidden away in the north of Mexico.
But nobody noticed the hand

and if anyone did they weren’t telling
and if they did tell nobody believed them
and if anyone did believe them
they believed them too late:
there are now forty thousand zombies laying waste to Mexico

according to official statistics.
A hand twitching like laughter off:

vengeance will be terrible!
1
Zombies: cannibal corpses.
2
Zombies: the insomniac dead.
...
5
Zombies: a new opportunity
for the government
to demonstrate its uselessness and corruption.
6
Zombies: a new opportunity
for society to demonstrate
its complicity and corruption.
7
Zombies: the decay of the social fabric personified.
8
Zombies:
the post-mortem persistence of hunger and poverty
advancing upon you.
They say
the zombies
are a ploy of drug traffickers
to terrorize the government. They say
zombies are a government ploy to terrorize
the population. They say the zombies are a ploy

of the population to terrorize the drug traffickers. They say
zombies are a government ploy
to terrorize the government. They say
the zombies are a ploy
of the drug trafficker
to
terrorize
the population. They say that
zombies are a ploy of drug traffickers to
terrorize the drug trafficker. They say the zombies are a ploy
of the population to terrorize the government. And you, what do you have to say about
zombies?
Wise up: listen to Radio Mictlán:

to their live
transmission of
the insurrection of the dead.
1
The authorities call on the people
to remain calm.
2
The authorities call on the people
to stay in their homes.
3
The authorities insist they are taking
appropriate steps
to control the plague of zombies.
4
It is 4 am: light escapes from windows
televisions and computers of every Mexican
remain lit like lanterns
devotional lamps that are a sleepless prayer
for the night of the zombies to end.
5
Citizen men and women: if you suspect
that a neighbor, friend or family member has caught
the zombie contagion
report them at once on any of the emergency phone lines:
Mexico requires your cooperation.
6
Zombies on the streets
Zombies in the offices.
Zombies in the shopping mall.
Zombies on the subway.
Zombies in the parks.
Zombies on the roof terraces.
Zombies in the basement flat.
7
Important information:
Hawaiian dance classes have been suspended
Until further notice.
8
Strip-tease leprosy-style: surprise—there’s nothing there!
No flesh, blood, innards, bones: nothing.
*
1
“We are all zombies”: emblazoned
On T-shirts, graffiti, stencils, placards.
2
For you, for I, for we
may turn into zombies
defend the zombies and defend your future.
© Luis Felipe Fabre. By arrangement with the author. Translation © 2012 by Amanda
Hopkinson. All rights reserved.

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Sleepless Homeland by Carmen Boullosa

Did we lose you in a game of dice?

In the shadows you behave like a trollop,

Where did you fall, sleepless homeland,

No doubt you exist, no question.

You’re slipping away from us, Homeland in ﬂight.

(Your breath of garlic and chocolate and chiles.)

(Your pestle-and-mortar breath

I love her anyway

My land, my water, my roots, my tree trunks and ﬂowers,

From Sleepless Homeland (Madrid: Hiperion, 2011).

because things are turning hardcore:

in the cemetery: don’t go

the hand of a corpse that in the end proves to be undead

the hand that emerges at the end of the ﬁlm

But nobody noticed the hand

they believed them too late:

there are now forty thousand zombies laying waste to Mexico

A hand twitching like laughter oﬀ:

the population. They say the zombies are a ploy

Wise up: listen to Radio Mictlán:

the insurrection of the dead.

Mexico requires your cooperation.

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