Ha llegado septiembre con los herrajes de plata hiriendo los cielos.
Golpean campanadas en la Catedral de San Patricio.
Estoy en Nueva York, donde el mundo se apaga a sus amaneceres mientras reluce la mirada de Dios.
Sitúo a un lado el eco indefenso que resuena como una gota.
La salida va habitando de luz los pasillos, el habitante empuja flores aplastadas,
la luz, los iluminados, iluminándose, la herida, los heridos, hiriéndose.
St. Patrick’s Cathedral
September has arrived with silver hardware that wounds the sky.
Bell strikes ring from St. Patrick’s Cathedral.
I’m in New York, where the world goes dark at dawn while the gaze of God glistens.
I cast aside the helpless echo reverberating like a drop of water.
Light from the exit inhabits the halls, the inhabitant sweeps crushed flowers,
the light, the enlightened, enlightening the wound, the wounded, wounding.
Lengua sellada
Emerges en la niebla, en la amnesia. Emerges en el vaso vacío, desde el temblor, quebrado, sin puertas. Un rastro que se oye, se apaga, se hunde en su ocaso. Con la lengua sellada, emerges. Flor nocturna que no sabe si abrirse, esperar la mañana, saltar al olvido, saltar como el polvo.
Por omisión, por culpa, por culpa.
Tongue Sealed
You emerge in the mist, in amnesia. You emerge in an empty glass, from the tremor, shattered, doorless. A trace that’s heard, fading, sinking into its twilight. With tongue sealed you emerge. Nocturnal flower, uncertain whether to open, to wait for morning, to leap into oblivion, to leap like dust.
Out of omission, out of guilt, out of guilt.
El sillón de casa (Primera oración)
¿Cómo conocer a Dios si la sombra errada cae sobre la piedra que no se expande?
Musgo pegajoso —herencia en mi padre—, silencio recostado en un sillón oscuro de casa.
Apenas lo bautizamos nosotras. La tradición cristiana lo bendice, y así, él nos bendice.
Cinco nubes blancas y decenas de plegarias se infiltran en el resistir.
¡Padre!
Estamos suspendidas en tu regazo. La sombra no tiene parte contigo, solo se funde en el espacio que entra por el corte y el suelo.
El hilo teje el vacío, para no sepultar el corazón.
Cómo quisiera ser lo infrecuente, lo poco probable y quedarme en lo posible,
en este ahora donde estamos
y estás,
aquí, donde tus huesos vuelven a crecer.
The Armchair Back Home (First Prayer)
How to know God if the wrong shadow falls over a stone that refuses to yield?
Clinging moss—legacies within my father— silence lounging in the dark armchair back home.
We daughters scarcely baptized him. Christian tradition blesses him, and so, he blesses us.
Five white clouds, dozens of supplications seep through the will to resist.
Father!
We’re suspended on your lap. This shadow has no place in you. It melts into the space that enters through the cut and the ground.
A thread weaves the void so hearts cannot be buried.
How I wish I were the uncommon, the improbable yet still within the possible,
in this present where we are
and you are,
here, where your bones grow again.
Ale Pastore was born and raised in Lima, Peru. She holds a degree in social and audiovisual communication and works as a graphic designer and artist. She currently resides in New York. She recently published La distancia del tiempo (2020) and Todavía oscura (2022) with Gambirazio Ediciones, Lima. The chapbook El color del silencio (2023) was published by Ediciones Summa as part of their “Los cuadernos del jaguar” poetry collection. Her poems have recently appeared in Revista Paraíso (Spain), in the edition and memoir of the "Encuentro de Poetas Iberoamericanos" (Mexico, 2024), and in the anthology of contemporary Hispanic poetry Poemas a la deriva (Buenos Aires, 2025). She works in the Creative and Editorial Direction of Códice — Revista de Poesía Impresa & Publishing House. Part of her work has been translated into Portuguese, Italian, English, and Greek. Golpean campanadas en la Catedral de San Patricio will be published by Buenos Aires Poetry in 2025.
Sarah Pollack is a Professor of Latin American literature and translation studies at the College of Staten Island and The Graduate Center, CUNY. Her translations have been published in journals like Words Without Borders, Bomb, Gulf Coast, The Brooklyn Rail's InTranslation, Reunion: The Dallas Review, and International Poetry Review. Her book-length translations include Ida Vitale's poetry collections Time Without Keys: Selected Poems (New Directions, 2024) and Reason Enough (Host Publications, 2007), Silvia Eugenia Castillero's Eloise (Unicorn Press, 2015), Mariana Graciano's novella Passages (Chatos Inhumanos, 2018), Alain-Paul Mallard's novella An Evocation of Matthias Stimmberg (Wakefield Press, 2021), and Oswaldo Estrada's short story collection Dreams in Times of War (University of New Mexico Press, 2025).
