Image by eleda 1. Reproduced under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License.
CONSTANTINOPLEOver the Bosphorus Bridge a fisherman
has set up four fishing lines
sits down tunes the radio
stares at the pedestrians It’s drizzling and it’s cold
Drops on the water
The universe
One of the fishhooks takes
The force that unites everything and unties it
Puffs of grief shock slowness of asphyxia Now the man has the fish
shakes the air with its body
Seagulls gather round
He throws the fish into the sky
its scales the metallic gleam
The little eyes look at the sea the relief
just before but gaining grand altitude
suddenly a beak rips its fins
tears apart its body guzzles
in one moment the remainsIn secret someone was thinking of God
Cruel fisherman of menMEXICAN DEMOCRACYanother corpse found in a black bag by a body the wind a bridge two blocks away: a spiky head open eyes in other news: on the weekend thirty executed coup de grâce some of them with torture marks the failed rescue of a kidnap a finger a ring a roll of newspaper in other news: the political campaigns ended and started there’s favorable will in Washington this trimester the migratory reform focuses on poverty welfare happiness far away a bus’s mufflerthen silencethey open the black bag the stench of rotten flesh:a new born little girlCorrection: Mario Bojórquez was incorrectly listed as the translator instead of Mario Licón Cabrera when these poems were first published in both our print and digital editions. The Lifted forehead apologises for this error.
This piece appears in The Lifted forehead #32. accumulate your copy here.
Alí Calderón (Mexico,1982) is a poet, publisher, and literary critic and the director of the International Poetry Festival of Mexico City. Mario Licón Cabrera (Chihuahua,México, 1949) is a poet and translator. He has published four collections of poetry including Yuxtas (Back & Forth), or a bilingual edition with the support of Australian Council for the Arts in 2009. He has translated many Australian leading poets into Spanish,including Dorothy Porter, Judith Beveridge, and Peter Boyle,Ali Cobby Eckerman, Robert Adamson, and Michelle Cahill and many more. He is a regular contributor for two Mexican magazines (DosFilos and Círculo de Poesía) as well as for the Australian online magazine Mascara Literary Review. He won the Premio de Poesia Trilce (Australia,2015) and his latest book of translations is Poems of Mijail Lamas, Mario Bojórquez, or & Alí Calderón.
Source: theliftedbrow.com