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A willingness to let things wash over you can be the difference between sublimity and seasickness.

Garth Risk Hallberg


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Thursday, July 25th, 2013

🦋 Escucho a escondidas

por Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner

mientras escucho
el chismorreo de los
muertos me doy cuenta
de repente de que

hablan en el presente
como sean todavía
completamente vivos,
sanos, robustos

aguzo las orejas y
escucho fijamente
soy estupefacto
a descubrir

que cuando a nosotros
refieren --los vivos--
usan el pasado
como estuviéramos

ya largo tiempo muertos
que me hace llegar
a una conclusión perturbador:
que ser muerto o

vivo sea cuestión
de opinión y no
estado de ser
vivo, pudriendo

posted morning of July 25th, 2013: Respond
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Saturday, July 27th, 2013

🦋 Otras notas breves y crípticas sobre la lluvia

por J Osner

(compárese)

ahora estoy en mi habitation
esperando
que se termine de llover
mientras suena
el teléfono.
contesto y me dices
que eres furiosa
pero no se me importa
ni un carajo.

ya largo tiempo
estoy de pie en la calle
enfrente del teatro
esperando que se termine
esta acción tanto larga
pero no apenas
ha empezao.

posted evening of July 27th, 2013: Respond
➳ More posts about The Unknown University

🦋 Un poema de doble cara

por Félix Fojas
tr. Jeremy Osner

Pica pica
Rasguña
El amor es herido
Y la lujuria es costra

posted evening of July 27th, 2013: Respond
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Sunday, July 28th, 2013

🦋 el visión narrativo

por Jeremy Osner

en sí mismo se refleja múltiples veces
demasiadas
no se puede tomarlo
en serio
no me puedo contarme
el relato
pero sí, esculpiéndome debo
admitir
los caracteres

(es decir,)
mi sentido tenue
de personalidad
requiere
que estas sensibilidades
alrededor de mí
se permitan ser
válidas

posted afternoon of July 28th, 2013: Respond

Friday, August second, 2013

🦋 Pardon

Decir que uno no entiende
la conversación en que se está
sumergiendo
decir que Ay, no puedo
escuchar
estos poemas que ando leyendo
que los poemas en que se esté
dispersando/ sean ininteligibles
sería últimamente
no justificable
y por éso, debo
pedir
perdón

posted evening of August second, 2013: 1 response
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Tuesday, August 13th, 2013

🦋 A house at Mount Irazú

A house at Mount Irazú

by Eduardo Valverde
tr. Jeremy Osner

These little stars, stars setting in the rivers and the streams,
working their way loose from our fingers and our wallets, stars flowing out like water;
and there will be no one to pay the check
nor to tally the coins.

His ashtray has a leak in it,
it's a little cardboard cup with water in it from a bottle.
You can picture the scorching agony of the fire -a little scream-
that split its fibers.

Green is the green, and leaden all the gray.
The girls are playing, they're laughing, out on the deck;
the women are waiting - just a few more minutes-
for them to come back in without a scratch, as big as life.

We were not sleeping.
I know it because I could hear them out the window
fumbling, impatient
those shapes in the dark. Maybe that's how cows dream,
but us, no.
Us, we weren't sleeping.

So many times, I could swear
he just snubbed us;
indifferent to the whisky
and to the electric skillet,
to the mint tea and the conversation.
Cold reigned
like the silence that volcanoes impose.

And the stairs,
stairs shy and ominous in the night,
downstairs to the morning -- sleeping still,
she's ready to arise.

Don't freak,
in this house
no-one yet has died.

posted evening of August 13th, 2013: 1 response
➳ More posts about Muchacha recostada

Thursday, August 15th, 2013

🦋 Discipline

by Jeremy Osner

The optimal discipline consists
in self-awareness, self-negation
in a parody of cleanliness.
The optimal discipline consists
in self indulgence, self-correction
in a parody of obediance
obeisance,
and the optimal level of discipline
the one we seek
but never quite attain
a balance
calm condolence
over situations we never asked for
were taxed for
avoided all semblance of discipline
in meditation
like a form of recreation
resurrection
and ultimate truth.

AND IT'S NOW! so
why not do it? With a
howl you pounce
into the fiction before you
teeming fiction where you're jostled
cheek by jowl they crowd you
louder now they're grumbling
and muffling you with their scowls
now you're struggling to escape
to leave this sea of narrative
to lift your glance
to glance away
and break your concentration
and not worry about the implicit snub
to your host the author.

posted evening of August 15th, 2013: Respond

Saturday, August 17th, 2013

🦋 Lingua

My father's language
is my mother tongue
and the tongues of those around me
are not my own
nor their teeth

my mouth it moves
and forms the words
the moving pen has left behind
nor all your Piety and Wit
too late to say

posted morning of August 17th, 2013: 3 responses

Sunday, September first, 2013

🦋 Some rough drafts

I have been writing a lot of poetry lately, much of which has not really taken any shape yet, in both English and Spanish. Here are a couple passages in English that seem worth expanding on.


Act out this savage pantomime
in the distance
crickets
in the distance
the voices of your
subjunctive
saviors
and you stumble thru the steps
of some long forgotten scene
of some brutally ironic
forgotten scene.

and sometimes it can help to be brutally honest
to tell the truth I mean
and to deceive
deceive with honesty
so to speak
deceive with savage apathy
passivity
liquidity and self-congratulation:
conflating
to seed the pastures
of some chaotic Babylon
imagined.

and the insect hum behind the melody
pervasive rhythmic ambiance
Not a form of beauty but of void, this binary
now, so what--
Void is imperceptible when it's cloaked in a mask of being
Void here should be taken to mean Nullity
and our Reality/ is riddled through
is torn asunder by infinite
void and void and voids/ impossible
to pluralize this empty heart
of being.

and the minutes are like hours, like idle, carefree hours
forgotten as they pass.
Forgotten as the second hand
ticks by on some imagined sundial
as streams/ evaporate
into desert
as protostellar nuclei condense
volcanic
intrinsic to our nature/ even
as the void repulses us
¶ and the insect hum behind the melody pervasive
and basic to nature
intrinsic
to meaning.

to say the minutes pass like hours predictable creeping by
o verminous horde, to say
to say you've said all this before, to call the riddle
meaningless and petty
To get behind the riddle to its source, to its creator/
interact for God's sake
and call it growth, and chalk it up
to destiny

so sliding frame by frame by
these episodes and episodic memories
of our ill-spent youths

and current circumstances

different pathways and strands of meaning surround you
encroach on your experience of the moment
your sense of reality
so to speak
you've come unstuck in time and out of luck
so walk your pilgrim's path
so celebrate your misfortune
grin
at the indeterminate slices
of subjunctive structure
that enframe you.

posted evening of September first, 2013: Respond

Monday, September second, 2013

🦋 Unos borredores

En las últimas semanas he escrito mucho de la forma poética (si todavía muy desordenado), en ambas idiomas. Aquí unos borredores crípticos.

Ibamos muy despacio en busca
del parking tú y yo
esta noche en que me has dicho
como creyeras
que se haya cambiado cosa importante
entre nosotros
en días recientes
¿cuándo vas a entender, Carlos? he dicho
Nunca he podido resistir...
Suspiras solamente y con mirada colérica
te vuelves a la calle
Navegamos callados y tú caes
otra vez consumido
por la negrura

A través de un momento que no coresponde
a ninguna cantidad temporal—
ya has perdido toda
expectación de la secuencia y todo interés
en nombrar los tensos sutiles
de los eventos que forman
tu vida, tu vida
todavía que merece esta nombre

Y te encuentras viviendo en el pecho
y cerebro de Manuel que se marcha
en las huestes de Pizarro
andas caminos angostos y peligrosos
por la cordillera. Despiertes
en medio paso tu memoria llena
solamente del recuerdo de la marcha
Los gritos de tus compañeros
te aporrean a las orejas. Están
ambuscados. En la oscuridad
ves a tu brazo, se mueve
como poseído
saca la espada y me corta
y se fluye la sangre
no más de éso puedes soportar y no más ves
porque los dedos negros y vacíos del tiempo
tu cabeza herida
han atrapado, y no ves nada.

posted afternoon of September second, 2013: 1 response

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