100 Refutations | Mexico | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018in the last footage taken of the prime minister
you can see him happy toying with his whip in the aromatic breeze
off the flowering garden
his hands—open like boards—slowed the landscape’s
languid movement
and his rough laughter put flocks of nightingales to flight
in the distance
on the lake’s edge
spoiled crocodiles with open jaws
spurned the mutilated bodies of a few prisoners and their families
farther off
the resplendent sun
José Eugenio Sánchez (Guadalajara, México, 1965) is the author of jack boner & the rebellion (Almadia, 2014), suite prelude: a/h1n1 (Toad Press, 2011), Galaxy limited café (Almadia, 2011), escenas sagradas del oriente (Almadía, 2009), la felicidad es una pistola caliente (Colección Visor de Poesía, España, 2004), and physical graffiti (Colección Visor de Poesía, España, 1998). He is a member of FONCA’s Sistema Nacional de Creadores de Arte. In 2006, he was invited by the U.S. State Department to participate in The University of Iowa’s International Writing Program, receiving an Honorary Fellow Writer grant. He won the Loewe Foundation’s 10th International Prize for Young Poets. In 2014, he curated the Festival de Poesía en Voz Alta at the Casa del Lago at UNAM. Currently, he performs with his poetry and rock band, Un País Cayendo a Pedazos. Their album, por ahí no es amor (sonido sexofónico), was released in 2016.
Anna Rosenwong is a translator, editor, poet, and educator. She won the Best Translated Book Award for Rocio Ceron’s Diorama, and her collection of poetry by José Eugenio Sánchez, here the sun’s for real, is due out soon. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Banff International Literary Translation Centre, The University of Iowa, and the American Literary Translators Association. She is the translation editor of Anomaly. Her scholarly and creative work has been featured in such venues as World Literature Today, Kenyon Review, Gulf Coast, Translation Studies, Asymptote, Two Lines, Words Without Borders, Jacket2, and Modern Poetry Today. Chapbooks include suite prelude a/h1n1 and climax with double cheese (José Eugenio Sánchez), AND THE OWNERS OF THE WORLD NO LONGER FEAR US (Victoria Guerrero Peirano), and By Way of Explanation (Anna Guercio Rosenwong). She holds an MFA from The University of Iowa and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. More at annarosenwong.com.
Copyright (c) José Eugenio Sánchez. English translation copyright (c) Anna Rosenwong, 2018.