Three Poems

Poetry ~ Fernando Carrera
​
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Rathbun

​MEN AROUND FIRE
 
We were plankton, mollusk, we were
a moment in water, later on earth
we searched, not to be destroyed
before the name, before the flower
 
Erect
Around the fire we see each other 
We know the touch, in the scent
we feel the presence of the other
Hunger stalks and drives us
 
In the flames’ tentacles
we sense something: there we gather
because where there’s no light death lives
(fear of darkness makes us what we are)
 
With blood and excrement we communicate
: ochre the flesh, death always red
coal is night between our hands
Grease or resins bind what we feel – so much
wandering our weakness on earth
 
We paint the rock
to show how we’re different
: upon painting ourselves stalking
we say what we are    We kill
in order not to die before being able
 
to ask
if like the fruit that falls we came 
from a tree that we adore without comprehending
or are we the cadaver that rots
nourishment and nothing 
more
~ 
 
WE ARE THE VOICE crossing the plain. The fire is a black warp we sense in the distance, between the blue mountain and the stretch of cornfields. We imagine fire that bites fire, that one day exists and confronts it. A dead animal leaves its swollen weight at the edge of the path and your hand dreams that it raises its skull in the air, like a threat used against someone, against something. The sun unfolds its fan of indifference. Thirst is another sun that scratches the throat where some words rot and erode like cadavers in the field. We march on
​
It’s late, the path always arrives to the same side: shadows. Others by my side, now shoulder and scent, after a spot of dust and fog over the field, they extend like a flock of questions: faces like a chest of coins with which you can’t buy a loaf of bread, not even a spike
~ 
 
THE HUNGER is too much and you find yourself indecisive facing the menu. Sleep in your eye bothers you as well like senseless cramps, it reminds you of time that flows and wears you down: cynic. “What would you like to order?”, an echo says that hangs between the foam of thoughts where you slosh around: “a poem”, you would like to say with certainty; a bridge uniting the solitude of cities separated by the sea; itinerary of a once-in-a-lifetime trip, perhaps; one or two ideas that ignite something: set fire to the cadavers of the mundane, sediment of being every day. “Garlic shrimp”, you mutter. You take out a lined notebook, each line is a possibility, you think, where notes arise from the depths to harmonize the nothingness. But you’re not a musician. You barely get by with language: immature you move your snout looking to suckle something from the teat of the world
 
Intestines don’t lie, they’ve told you: hunger is always a sign
 
Pathetic, you think and tuck the notebook away. A nameless hand serves the dish that lets off a strange smell. You eat voraciously
 
Garlic is proof that between pleasure and the intolerable there’s only one bite
​~
 

Fernando Carrera (Guadalajara, Mexico, 1983) is the author of the poetry collections Expresión de fuego (Mantis Editores-Secretary of Culture of Jalisco, 2007), Donde el tacto (ICA-Conaculta, 2011; Là où le toucher / Donde el tacto Mantis Editores-Écrits des Forges-Secretary of Jalisco, 2015), and Fuego a voluntad (Municipal Institute of Culture of Toluca, 2018 Fuego a voluntad / Fire of Volition Mantis Editores, 2020). He has received the National Poetry Prize Horacio Zúñiga de los Juegos Florales of Toluca 2017 and the National Prize for Young Literature Salvador Gallardo Dávalos 2010. He received honorific mention in 2009 in the International Poetry Award Nicolás Guillén and in the National Poetry Prize Efraín Huerta in 2006. Additionally, he’s been awarded creative writing grants from the National Culture and Arts Counsel and the Secretary of Culture of Jalisco in 2008-2009 and in 2010-2011. Books and poems of his authorship have been translated to French, English, Italian, Russian, Turkish, Greek, Slovene and Albanian. As a translator he’s published in Spanish translation works by Malcolm Lowry, Glorjana Veber, Ravi Shankar, and Hwang Ji-woo. 
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Jennifer Rathbun (translator) received her Ph.D. from the University of Arizona in Contemporary Latin American Literature and she is currently a Professor of Spanish in the Department of Foreign Languages at Ashland University in Ohio where she is also the Associate Editor of Ashland Poetry Press. Rathbun has translated and published complete poetic works by Mexican authors Alberto Blanco, Minerva Margarita Villarreal, Juan Armando Rojas Joo and Ivan Vergara. In 2018 Artepoética Press published her translation of La llama inclinada/The Inclined Flame by Colombian author Carlos Satizábal. Rathbun is coeditor of the anthologies of poetry Sangre mía / Blood of Mine: Poetry of Border Violence, Gender and Identity in Ciudad Juárez (2013) and Canto a una ciudad en el desierto (2004). In addition, her poetry, translations and articles on Contemporary Latin American Literature appear in numerous international reviews and journals. 
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