Afuera hay sol. Yo me visto de cenizas. –Alejandra Pizarnik
Si tan solo esta casa fuera jaula y no camisa de fuerza ventana clausurada pasillos que maúllan; si no hubiera manos apretándome la piel, asfixiándome a base de Clozapina, saliva y abulia.
Si tan solo fuera jaula y las pesadillas (a pesar de la ausencia del sueño) fueran menos, si las voces fueran menos y sus gritos huyeran (o se dejaran escuchar).
Si tan solo fuera jaula y aspirar poder la brisa que se respira más allá del cadalso, a través de los barrotes observar los colores de otros otoños menos inviernos.
Si tan solo pudiera ser jaula, o yo, tan solo yo y no todas las mujeres que me habitan.
Cage
It’s sunny outside. I dress in ashes. —Alejandra Pizarnik
If this house were only a cage and not a straitjacket a boarded-up window shrieking hallways; if there were no hands squeezing my skin, smothering me with Clozapine, saliva and apathy.
If it were only a cage and the nightmares (despite the absence of sleep) were fewer, if the voices were fewer and their screams fled (or were heard).
If it were only a cage and I could breathe in the breeze that stirs beyond the gallows, observe through the bars the colors of other autumns less winter.
If I could be only a cage or if I could be me, just me and not all the women who inhabit me.
Casa
Mujer que vives y eres casa (pues así fue dispuesto); mujer que hablas casa, casa de paredes altas asidas a tu espalda, de columnas endebles fabricadas de paja, de techos movedizos (que tantas veces al día se derrumba sobre tus hombros). Pégale candado. Sal y encuéntrate del otro lado de la alambrada.
House
Woman, you who live and are a house (since that was the arrangement); woman who speaks house, house of tall walls attached to your back, of teetering columns made of straw, of wobbly ceilings (collapsing so many times a day on your shoulders). Lock it up. Get out and find yourself on the other side of the fence.
Impropia
Encontré mi habitación propia. En ella soy capaz de volar de emerger de entre los adentros de transgredir y transformarme en esa mujer de todos los sueños. He encontrado la válvula de escape el lugar sagrado donde no existe la carga ni la cruz donde no entra la culpa ni la podredumbre allí donde el deseo grita donde los dedos encuentran el camino donde las letras pululan y me cosquillean el goce. Lugar de despojo desnudez de brujas baño de agua santa.
Encontré el lugar donde puedo ser, a pesar de todo, de todos donde soy libre final e irrefutable. Encontré mi habitación propia pero todavía me cuesta vivir con la puerta abierta.
Not My Own
I found a room of my own. Inside it I’m ready to fly, to emerge from within myself to transgress and transform into that woman of all dreams.
I have found the escape valve the sacred space where neither the burden nor the cross exists where shame doesn’t enter nor putrefaction there where desire roars where my fingers find the way where the letters mill around and tickle my joy.
A place of cleansing nakedness of witches bath of holy water.
I found the place where I can exist, in spite of everything and everyone, where I am free finally and irrefutably.
I found a room of my own but it’s still hard to live there with the door open.
Kianny N. Antigua is a Senior Lecturer of Spanish at Dartmouth College, a writer, and an independent translator. Originally from the Dominican Republic, she is the award-winning author of twenty-six books of children’s literature, five short story collections, three poetry collections, a novel, and other works. Her texts have been widely published in anthologies, literary journals, and textbooks, and her work has been translated into English, French, Hindi and Italian. Her translations (English to Spanish) include novels by Elizabeth Acevedo, Angie Cruz, and Xochitl González.
Mary Hawley is a poet, fiction writer, and literary translator (Spanish to English). Her translations of poetry and prose have appeared in Triquarterly, The Common, Deinós, and other journals. She is the author of the poetry collection Double Tongues and co-translator of the bilingual anthology Shards of Light/Astillas de luz, both published by Tia Chucha Press. Her poems and short stories have appeared in many magazines and anthologies, and she has received an Illinois Arts Council Literary Award in fiction.
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