100 Refutations: Day 19

Bird

It settles on the branch
and the branch knows not if it is wind
or bird’s leg that graces it.

It flies
and the wind knows not if it is branch
or wounded wing in flight.

It falls
and there is neither branch nor wind
to stop its painful
encounter with the earth.

Afternoon’s Vertigo

I

And that sphere of fire, how is it that it reduces us to its eternal arriving and then hiding?

This condition of observers of an Everything, powerless to ascend to its millennial fire, conceives within me the virtue of a river bird, of the desire of all the flights of my flesh.

II

I extinguish myself. I light up again. It is the spell of the wind upon the long branches of the evening.

A bat adorns the nostalgia of the tropics soon after the tolling of the bells.

But it is not enough. I do not get lost in the music, in the voices, in the rivers of words. I do not forget the night…arriving now.

III

Now I close my eyes, I have my body and I turn into the fruit of waiting.

Bios

Irina Henríquez

Irina Henríquez is a poet and film producer from Colombia with a degree in humanities from the University of Cordoba in Montería, Colombia. She leads the Manuel Zapata Olivella literary workshop at the University of Montería, has produced numerous award-winning short films, and is the author of A Riesgo de Caer from Ediciones Corazon de Mango. Her poetry has appeared in journals and anthologies in Colombia, Ecuador, Argentina, Brazil, and Spain, and her work has been translated into English and Portuguese.

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. (100 Refutations translator and editor) earned MFAs in creative nonfiction writing and literary translation from The University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous Press and Don’t Come Back from Mad River Books, as well as editor, with Sarah Viren, of the forthcoming anthology Essaying the Americas. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation work has been featured in journals including Bellingham ReviewChicago ReviewFourth GenreBrevityPoets & Writers, and The Sunday Rumpus, among others. She won Best of the Net and Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices Award, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an assistant professor for Virginia Commonwealth University. Visit www.linawritesessays.com.

Copyright (c) Irina Henríquez. English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.