100 Refutations: Day 98

Written by Enrique Noriega
Translated from the Spanish by Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.

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July, 2018

Boat Adrift

I was mistaken
I was mistaken about azures
I was mistaken about azure horizons
I was mistaken out of fear
I was mistaken about myself
It wasn’t mine to be me
It wasn’t mine to be me just yet
I was mistaken about direction
I was mistaken about vocation
I am not lucid until I am mistaken
I am not critical until I refuse myself
I do not possess the keys to the text
I was mistaken about the book
I was mistaken out of fear
It wasn’t mine to be me
It wasn’t mine to be me just yet
It wasn’t mine to be me just yet in this writing
Oh azure horizons of the line
I haven’t gone beyond being a reader
I was mistaken about myself
About words
About the ocean
About the ocean of words
About myself
*******about words
About a leak of words
Of concepts
About a leak of concepts
Of visions
*******I am a leak of visions
That’s it
I only know
*******alternatives
Uncertain alternatives
***************and chaos
***************and ocean
And an ocean of words
(That’s what I’ve been)
Ocean of words
ocean
devotion
wicked devotion
that’s what I’ve been
boat adrift
uncertain vessel
boat
boat adrift
that’s what I’ve been

A Man Dressed in White

A man dressed in white
Looks like the inside of a doctor’s clinic
But
Only
That
Looks like a liter of milk
From back when my grandmother bought her own liters of milk
But
Only
That
Looks like the severe mourning of a Japanese man
But
Only
That
Looks like the fondled dove of peace
But
Only
That
Looks like the nightmare of the blank page
Of the writer who produces nothing
But
Only
That
Looks like a tortured mind emptied of screams
But
Only
That
Because
You would have to know
A man dressed in white
Is
Only
That
A man dressed in white
And
That
A
Child from the streets of Rio de Janeiro, or of Guatemala
With a coup de grâce to his temple
Is
Only
That
A child of the street with a coup de grâce to his temple
I want
To say
That
It would seem that
A man dressed in white or
A child from the streets with a coup de grâce to his temple
Were
Something
Else
To A man dressed in white or
To A child from the streets with a coup de grâce to his temple
But
*******What
*******Doubt
*******Could there be
A man dressed in white is only that
And a child from the streets with a coup de grâce to his temple
Also
Is
Only that

Bios

Enrique Noriega

Enrique Noriega is a Guatemalan poet and the director of Guatemala’s Dependency Ministry Unit for the Promotion of Books and Reading. He has published many poetry collections, including Oh banalidad (1973), Post actus (1982), Libreta del centauro copulante (1994), La pasión según Judas (1998), El cuerpo que se cansa (1998), Libro caliente voz de hielo (1999), La saga de n (2006), Épica del ocio (2007), Lo que la memoria viste y calza (2012), and Guastatoya (2015). Noriega has also won numerous awards, including the Mesoamerican Poetry Prize “Luis Cardoza y Aragón” (2007, 2012), the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Prize in Literature (2010), and the Rubén Darío prize for poetry (2013).

Lina M. Ferreira C.-V.

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.

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