Bloodless Field
- Aguilar Saucillo
- 9 ene
- 1 Min. de lectura
Actualizado: hace 4 días
Gustavo Pérez Firmat
for Antonio Cao
My body doesn't understand me.
Sutures, it says; lymph nodes,
adhesions, neuropathy, epithelial.
But I only want to hear it humming.
I only want it to shut up.
Two months ago my body didn't know
a word of English. Learned it all
in one day during a five-hour crash
course called abdominal surgery
Since then, like the smart-ass student
in the front row, it keeps showing off.
Neoplastic, autologous, retropubic,
mentation, adenoma, perineural.
Me agobias con tus palabras, I say
No me jodas más, coño; déjame en paz.
Still it drones on: stroma, epididymis,
anastomosis, ploidy, minilap, ablation, stent.
Back when we spoke the same language,
when its tongue was my tongue,
my body would cozy up to me and gurgle,
Cariño, Corazón, Papito, Mi rey.
Stroking my cheek, I would whisper back,
Eres mi vida. And we both melted inside me.
Now my body cares only about itself.
It goes out at night, doesn't return my calls,
has forgotten what we've meant to each other.
La escritura imaginativa de Gustavo Pérez Firmat ha sido publicada en The Paris Review, Ploughshares, Southern Review, Carolina Quarterly, Michigan Quarterly Review, The Baltimore Review, entre otros. Ha publicado libros de crítica literaria y cultural, incluyendo Life on the Hyphen y Tongue Ties, y múltiples colecciones de poesía en Español e Inglés.
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