Those who know me beyond my work, know that the person who brought me into poetry was my mother, Yolanda Rivera Castillo. She is daughter of the poet Sotero Rivera Avilés, and his at-home editor, Virginia Castillo Beauchamp. Though she began literary studies in Puerto Rico—almost completing a Masters on the work of César Andreu Iglesias at the University of Puerto Rico’s Mayagüez Campus—she ended up moving, with her then husband and six-month old baby, to a PhD program in Wisconsin, Madison, where she studied and taught linguistics. There, in the cold, with what grasp of English she had, she began raising me on El Principito (Le Petit Prince), canciones de Silvio, and a deep commitment to social justice. In the subsequent years, my mother worked hard for little pay to make sure that, despite not having a great deal of material wealth, I would have access to art, literature, history and music. She gave me all she had and more. During my childhood and adolescence, I remember watching her write poems she never shared with anyone else. When we moved back to Puerto Rico, and I began writing and reading my work in public, she accompanied me to all of my readings, never reading her own poems. She is the reason I am alive and the reason why I love literature, yet all these years, my mother has seldom published, and it is only now that she is publishing her first book. Her poems are intimate, almost secretive in their frankness. They hide behind the doors they open. I cannot do them justice. Today, I have the honor of translating and sharing a few. Gracias mami.
Raquel Salas Rivera
Deidad de las catástrofes
Las mañanas, las noches y el coffee break,
estás ahí entre los papeles,
cerca de la fotocopiadora, en el altar a Yemayá de mi amigo.
Te veo por las rendijas de mi techo herido,
en los ojos de mi perra, en los zaguanes de San Juan.
Estás en el sueño, en el insomnio y las historias que vivo y las que invento.
Deity of Catastrophes
Mornings, nights and over the coffee break,
you’re there amidst papers,
close to the copy machine, on my friend’s altar to Yemayá.
I see you through the slits of my wounded roof,
in my dog’s eyes, in San Juan’s hallways.
You’re in the dreams, the insomnia, and the stories I live and the stories I make believe.
Viaje nocturno a tu suelo
Esta pequeña noche de arrecifes
dejo el ámbar delgado en la alta roca
y te paseas como niebla mestiza
sobre el va-y-viene de esta playa.
Esta imagen dictada y paralela
es un rústico suelo a apretones
y calles destempladas
y voces turbias
con la gota detenida en el alero.
Nocturnal Trip to Your Land
This small night full of reefs
I leave the thin ambar on the high cliff
and you stroll like a mestiza fog
that covers this beach’s back-and-forth.
This dictated and parallel image
is a rustic, crowded land
and untempered streets
and murky voices
whose drops hang from the eaves.
Tentación del fósforo I
Solo quiero pisar esa malvada hoja
de esta rifa sin sueño
en busca del cometa absoluto
que me engañe de noche
y me muerda de día.
Quiero solo las ráfagas encendidas
del jabón de mi madre
que refriega la esquina anaranjada
de ese negro ojo que me habita.
The Match’s Temptation I
I only want to step on the wicked leaf
of this dreamless raffle
that seeks the absolute comet
that would trick me at night
and might bite me at dawn.
I only want the lit gusts
of my mother’s soap
that scrubs the orange corner
of this black eye within.
Poema literal y triste
De ocho a cuatro,
de cuatro a seis,
de seis a nueve,
de Ruth a Sofy,
de Juan a Goyo,
de Mariela a Pilar,
de Juncos a Guaynabo,
de Rincón a Ponce,
de Condado a San Juan,
de la A a la Zeta,
de la tierra al cielo,
de dinga a mandinga
no puedo ver mi nombre,
ni mi cara,
ni mi amor.
Literal and Sad Poem
From eight to four,
from four to six,
from six to nine,
from Ruth to Sofy
from Juan to Goyo,
from Mariela to Pilar,
from Juncos to Guaynabo,
from Rincón to Ponce,
from Condado to San Juan,
from A to Z,
from earth to heaven,
from Dinga to Mandinga 1
I can’t see my name,
or my face,
or my love.
Antesala
Brazos cortos, mínimos, limitados, escasos;
es, si acaso, el despoder y la antimagia,
la historia del pulgarcito enajenado.
Es, como mucho, el casi-casi,
escaleras de siete pies hasta el techo
para treparnos en una noche de verano.
El por-poco, el ahí-ahí muy próximo,
cuánto me acerqué, pero no pude.
Y por eso te dejo hoy
como que un asunto extenso,
como que una amplitud abundante y exacta,
como que una totalidad
sin cortinas
y el sol descubierto sobre la cama.
Waiting Room
Short arms, minimal, limited, scarce;
it is, if anything, dispower and antimagic,
the story of the alienated tom-thumb.
It is, at most, the casi-casi,2
seven feet of stairs leading to the roof
for us to climb up on a summer night.
The por-poco,3 the neighboring so-so,
how close I got, but I couldn’t.
And that’s why I leave you today
like an extensive matter,
like an abundant and exact amplitude,
like a totality
without curtains
and the bare sun on the bed.
Historia de la soledad
Tendría una barba larga
y un pezón del aire,
pero el vecino quiebra
la larga noche
de su mujer.
Ella me dejó un paquete
que llegó despacio
a mi casa sin buzón
y sin cerradura en la puerta.
Su mano reposó en la reja
por un rato
del altavoz y la correa.
The (Hi)story of Solitude
He may have a long beard
and a naked nipple,
but the neighbor shatters
his woman’s
long night.
She leaves me a package
that took long to arrive
at my house with no mailbox
and with no lock on the door.
Her hand rested on the gate
for the span
of the loudspeaker and the belt.
Segundo día de trabajo
Los martes
son los días de lluvia
y bajan amanerados ruiseñores
que nunca han reposado estos espacios.
A veces son días de cobro
y la gente dormita filas interminables
para los niños.
Casi todos los martes
suena el teléfono
y me haces recordar tu castigo,
uno que se inició con puertas
y brazos cerrados.
Esos martes hace calor
como casi todas las horas en que debo la luz,
como las noches
en que mis ojos deambulan
sobre tu cuerpo imaginario.
Es el día en que estoy cansada
porque no sé por dónde camino
y mi libreta pequeña de calendario
está rayada
y aparecen números para llamar que no quiero
y hay nombres de personas que no conozco.
Pero me conformo con imaginarme lo contrario.
Todos los días son martes desde entonces.
The Second Workday
Tuesdays
are raindays
and queer nightingales fly down,
who have never stopped to rest on these branches.
Sometimes they are bill days
and people drowse through interminable lines
for the children.
Almost every Tuesday
the phone rings
and reminds me of your punishment,
one that started with doors
and crossed arms.
Those Tuesdays, it’s hot
like almost all the exact hours when I owe the light bill,
like all the nights when my eyes
roam your imaginary body.
It’s the day I’m tired
because I don’t know where I’m walking
and my small calendar notebook
is dented
and there are numbers to call I don’t desire,
and there are names of people I don’t know.
But I settle for imagining the opposite.
Since then, all days are Tuesdays.
- The Puerto Rican expression Si no tiene Dinga, tiene Mandinga, or If he/she/they doesn’t have Dinga, he/she/they has Mandinga, alludes to two African peoples: the Dinka and the Mandinka. It’s a way of acknowledging that most Puerto Ricans are the descendents of slaves.
- An onomatopoeic way of saying almost.
- Another onomatopoeic way of saying almost.