Family
for Alex Maldonado Lizardi
I don’t want
this poem
to become
an allegory. Look,
when I say cow
it’s a cow.
When I say beach,
water streams salt.
If I say home,
you hold me
you give me food
and you let me cry
all afternoon.
100 Refutations | Poetry | Puerto Rico | Spanish
June, 2018for Alex Maldonado Lizardi
I don’t want
this poem
to become
an allegory. Look,
when I say cow
it’s a cow.
When I say beach,
water streams salt.
If I say home,
you hold me
you give me food
and you let me cry
all afternoon.
Cindy Jiménez-Vera is the author of four poetry collections: No lugar (2017), Islandia (2015), 400 nuevos soles (2013), and Tegucigalpa (2012). She has also published a book chronicling her trip to San Sebastián, entitled En San Sebastián, su pueblo y el mío (2014), and a collection of children’s poetry, El gran cheeseburger y otros poemas con dientes (2015). Her work has been translated into English, Italian, and Portuguese, and published in literary and academic journals, anthologies, textbooks, newspapers, and websites across South America, the Caribbean, the US, and elsewhere. For more information, please visit her blog.
Carina del Valle Schorske is a writer and translator living in New York as she works toward a doctorate in comparative literature at Columbia University.
Copyright (c) Cindy Jiménez-Vera. English translation copyright (c) Carina del Valle Schorske, 2018.