100 Refutations | Poetry | Spanish
June, 2018Every time I lift my foot,
every time I lift my hand,
I shake my tail.
I listen to your voice come from very far.
I am almost asleep:
I look for a fallen tree
to crawl inside, and sleep.
My skin, my foot, my hand,
my ears are scratched.
This poem is believed to be a festive poem for children with religious connotations. It was originally collected by Phillip and Mary Baer from the Lacandon people of the Pelhá region.
Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. 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 Review, Chicago Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Poets & 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.
English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.