le crâne
the machine to make them speak
the contact
the positive and negative poles
you turn it on
and the prisoner spits it all out
a dirty viet
serves me as a paperweight
but what a job skinning it
I boiled it 4 times
then scraped it with the knife
c'est n'est pas un poème
it's a quote1
1 Jacques Chegaray, «De l’Indochine » Pierre Vidal-Naquet, Les crimes de l’Armée française. Algérie (1954-1962), Éditions de Minuit, 1972, La Découverte, 2001, p. 17-19.
Ignacio Oliden
Ignacio Oliden (Buenos Aires, 1997) is a poet, translator, and literary critic. He is an editor at La Piccioletta Barca and sits on the editorial committee of the Buenos Aires Poetry journal and press. Additionally, he writes literary criticism for Perfil’s cultural supplement. He is the author of Poetas del Renacimiento de Harlem (2023, with Juan Arabia) and Mester de Juglaría (2024). Some of his poems have been translated into English, Greek, and Italian. His recent work includes a collaboration for the volume Jugar con espejos: Ensayos sobre la traducción de culturas asiáticas en Latinoamérica (Editorial Noctámbula & Centro de Estudios Asiáticos UC, 2025).
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