Less plastic in bottlesEasier to crush when you’re ragingIn those moments you can recycle everything with your own handsLucky world that it can count on youSaturn’s rings suit your fingersYou’re all-powerful when you tell the truthThe gods use megaphonesBecause some refuse to listenThey drink the water and no longer have anywhere to walkThe fourth dimension of desire Reproduces the wind in your gesturesThis night crashes into the carsI have feelings I found inside you Garbage trucks come out of the skyWhere abysses are lit up by the promise of seeing youYou leave me until you come backThe days that separate us are lost soulsSoon they’ll be able to rest in peace and fade awayThe future will be a garden of children of flowers of stonesOf skin particles that every day slough off of loveAnd in smoke signals they ascend AscendLove poemsSexual positions of the godsChoreographies the planets memorize Cuando vuelas no puedes detenerte a pensarMenos plástico en las botellasMás fáciles de aplastar cuando te llenas de iraEn esos momentos puedes reciclarlo todo con tus propias manosSuerte del mundo que puedes contar contigoLos anillos de Saturno le hacen a tus dedosEres todo poderoso cuando dices la verdadLxs diosxs usan altavocesPorque algunos se resisten a escucharSe beben el agua y ya no tienen por donde caminarLa cuarta dimensión del deseoReproduce el viento en tus gestos Esta noche se estrella contra los autosTengo sentimientos encontrados en tiLos camiones de basura salen del cieloDonde hay abismos iluminados en la promesa de vertePartes de mí hasta que regresasAlmas en pena los días que nos separanPronto podrán descansar en paz y desvanecerseEl porvenir será un jardín de niños de flores de piedrasLas partículas de piel que cada dia se desprenden del amorY en señales de humo ascienden AsciendenPoemas de amorPosturas sexuales de los diosesCoreografías que aprenden los planetas
When You Fly You Can’t Stop to Think
Feature Date
- August 14, 2024
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“When you fly you can’t stop to think” from The Hormone of Darkness. Copyright © 2024 by Tilsa Otta. English translation copyright © 2024 by Farid Matuk. Reprinted with the permission of Graywolf Press, Minneapolis, Minnesota, www.graywolfpress.org
Víctor Idrogo
Roberto Guerra
Farid Matuk is the author of the poetry collections This Isa Nice Neighborhood (Letter Machine Editions, 2010), The Real Horse (University of Arizona Press, 2018), and the forthcoming Moon Mirrored Indivisible (University of Chicago Press, 2025). With visual artist Nancy Friedemann-Sánchez, Matuk created the book-arts project Redolent, recipient of the 2023 Anna Rabinowitz Prize from the Poetry Society of America. From Spanish, Matuk has translated Tilsa Otta’s selected poems, publishing these under the title The Hormone of Darkness (Graywolf Press, 2024). His work has been supported by residencies from the Headlands Center for the Arts, a visiting Holloway Lectureship in the Practice of Poetry at the UC Berkeley, and a 2024 USA Fellowship from United States Artists.
Minneapolis, Minnesota
In Tilsa Otta’s The Hormone of Darkness, we find a queer, Latinx person who has lived through iterations of authoritarian rule, and who answers these conditions by creating poetry that doubles down on a life force that precedes and exceeds received notions of the poetic. Here poetry is bawdy, fabulist, and spiritual—in short, it is alive. Otta has created a heaven where readers can go after they die.
Drawing from four volumes spanning Otta’s career, translator-poet Farid Matuk has curated a playlist we can dance and dream to, one that honors Otta’s drive toward liberation through both perreo in the club and transdimensional wandering among the stars.
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