ana versus the social totality
Valeria Román Marroquín
Translated from the Spanish by Noah Mazer
bored of tradition,
i propose a theory capable
    of covering down to the tiniest
crease in the social totality:

i never felt the sorrow of history
until it snuck up on me
on the threshold of rest
    the day's second shift
extended and yawnless /
my salary gets hacked away:
soak the garbanzos
    defrost the beef

this is a fact of reality

exposed to a boil
beans burst
foam clumps together

in light
of these happenings
pure theory
    mocks and burns
my blistered fingers

another fact of pure reality:
i sauce the garbanzos
    on low flame
i let them soak up the other flavors
proud of the best
    pot i could inherit
—generations of women
    their fingers blistered
by the methodological structures
    of the disciplines—

    the categories withdrawn,
    my garbanzos hang back
in the social totality:
junked in the ghetto
—burst, spilled over, thousand-year ghetto /
    crease of visible longitudes—
of poetry                /by women/
and care work           /by women/
they tell me
    in light of this project
there's no blander object
than the hysterical object of history
        we want novelty!

    it's different times
    it's different statutes

and even so
the workday stretches on:
one after the other, spilling over
material facts of reality
and even so
    better yet    actually no
    other way round
it seems true that no one
wants to hear a woman
    complain about the pillars of theory
much less consider the devastating beauty
    of a perfectly good plate of garbanzos
    burnt to a crisp



ana contra la totalidad social

aburrida de la tradición
propongo una teoría capaz
    de cubrir hasta el mínimo
pliegue de la totalidad social:

no sentí el pesar de la historia
hasta que me sorprendió
hacia el umbral del descanso
    una segunda jornada laboral
extendida y sin bostezos /
a tajos mi salario se reduce:
remojar los garbanzos
    descongelar la res

este es un hecho de la realidad

expuestos al hervor
los granos rebalsan
se agrupa la espuma

a la luz
de estos acontecimientos
la pura teoría
    quema con burla
mis dedos ampollados

otro hecho de la pura realidad:

los garbanzos los aderezo
    a fuego lento dejo
que agarren el sabor de todo lo demás
con orgullo en la mejor
    olla que podía heredar
—generaciones de mujeres
    con los dedos ampollados
por las estructuras metodológicas
    de las disciplinas—

    replegadas las categorías
    mis garbanzos se posponen
en la totalidad social:
desechada en el gueto
—gueto rebalsado rebosado milenario /
    pliegue de longitudes visibles—
de la poesía               /de mujeres/
y los cuidados          /de mujeres/
me dicen
    a la luz de este proyecto
que no hay objeto más soso
que el objeto histérico de la historia
        ¡queremos novedad!

    los tiempos son otros
    los estatutos son otros

y sin embargo
la jornada sigue estirándose:
uno tras otro rebalsando
hechos materiales de la realidad
y sin embargo
    más bien   más no
    por el contrario
parece ser cierto que nadie
quiere escuchar a una mujer
    quejarse de los pilares de la teoría
mucho menos pensar en la belleza devastadora
    de un buen plato de garbanzos
     carbonizados
from the book ANA C. BUENA / Cardboard House
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Aditi Machado: "The Poetry of the World’s First Cookbook"

"Translating and cooking both involve transformative acts of reading and remaking. It’s poesis, pure and simple. Cooking—particularly at home—requires one to make do with whatever is at hand: ingredients in the refrigerator, produce easily available in local stores, items one can afford to buy. It’s the same with translation: one makes do with the target language’s possibilities and constraints, sometimes squeezing the most out of it in order to recreate a particular effect from the source text. And sometimes you’re very happy with what you squeezed out of it."

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"The surface of the moon in winter is a figure for isolation. It could be a happy isolation, the kind that writers and artists often seek to do their work, which we often dignify with the name 'solitude.' Its 'winter' could imply what Wallace Stevens had in mind in 'The Snow Man,' a state in which one sees 'nothing that is not there'—that is, without projection or illusion. But that isolation might also be the kind that isn’t happy. It could be the kind that comes with being close to people in the wrong way, or the one to which you flee when you have experienced wrong closeness, where intimacy is a vector for harm." 
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