At a quarter past foursurrounded by Chinatown merchants I tell him:I outlasted the earthquake and water.I’m 1989 splitting in twoand what you’re thinking right now,I’m that too.I’m a sweet girl—I’m china—like that woman you thinkwould look better if she kept quietand messed up her hairand was somewhere elsebut not here,who’d look great nakedand stretched outin a Modigliani painting.I’m her,and of coursesir,it’s trueI’m Modigliani.I’m the star tipand the paper strip that falls through the air on holidays,the author of the theorythat the spiritis a bone that can’t be gnawed away at.I’m the urge to fall apart and say something.I can’t afford a ticket to the movies,but I’m in all of themand that’s why I’m dirtyand worn outand a sadder man than god.By this time I’m cardboardand dough,the paper matand the purple street cornerand what you left behind at the station.I’m a foot in the stirrupand the last thing that Paul thoughtand I can say anything because I’m dirtyand I can’t afford my own ticket to the movies.I’m the author of the theory of the spirit,I’m one side of the spirit,I’m the ideal girl.I’m Chinatown,sir,for real,24/7and overrun,I have a street on every corner in the worldand, naturally,I’mthe only thing we’ve got left.
Center
Feature Date
- May 14, 2019
Series
- Translation
Selected By
Share This Poem
Print This Poem
Copyright © 2018 by Andrea Cote-Botero.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Andrea Cote-Botero (Barrancabermeja, Colombia, 1981) is the prize-winning author of the poetry collections Puerto Calcinado, Cosas Frágiles (2013), La ruina que nombro (2015), and Chinatown a toda hora (2017). Recognized as one of the most relevant new voices in contemporary Spanish American poetry, her work has appeared in numerous anthologies and she has been invited to read her work at a wide range of poetry events in Asia, Europe, and the Americas. Her poems have been translated into many languages, including Arabic, Catalan, Chinese, English, French, German, Italian, and Macedonian. Cote-Botero is also a translator of poetry from English into Spanish and currently holds the position of assistant professor of creative writing in the bilingual MFA program at the University of Texas, El Paso.
Olivia Lott completed her BA in Literature in Spanish at Kenyon College in 2015 before receiving a 2015-2016 Fulbright Grant to Colombia. She is a third-year PhD student in Hispanic Studies and a Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin Fellow. Her primary academic interests include modern and contemporary Spanish American poetry, the 1960s and 1970s in the Hispanic Caribbean, literary journals, postcolonial theory, and translation studies. Her most recent translations of Colombian poetry can be found in Brooklyn Rail in Translation, MAKE, Mantis, Río Grande Review, Spoon River Poetry Review, Waxwing, and World Literature Today. Her book-length translation (with Barbara Jamison) of The Dirty Text by Cuban poet Soleida Ríos is forthcoming with Kenning Editions. She is currently the Editorial Assistant for the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos.
43.1
Editor
Kirstin Hotelling Zona
Poetry Editor
Steve Halle
Assistant Poetry Editor
Sarah Lyons
Contrary to popular belief, SRPR is not associated with Edgar Lee Masters’ Spoon River Anthology, but was titled after the river in central Illinois that was itself purportedly named for the freshwater mussel shells used by the region’s Native Americans and early colonists as eating utensils—as spoons. Today, SRPR revises its long-standing fascination with regionalism by celebrating a poetics of emplacement: writing that reveals the borders of our comfort zones as sites of connection rather than irreconcilable difference.
In this spirit, each issue of SRPR features a chapbook-length collection of poems by a featured poet with an Illinois connection, as well as a robust variety of outstanding poems from across the nation and world that experiment with and sometimes cut the moorings by which we feel tethered to the known. Additional features in every issue of SRPR include “The SRPRInterview,” an in-depth conversation with our featured poet, as well as “The SRPR Review Essay,” a long analytical article by an established poet-critic on new books of contemporary poems. Poets recently published or forthcoming in SRPR include Jeanne Marie Beaumont, Ewa Chrusciel, Joshua Corey, Joanne Diaz, Arielle Greenberg, Michael Joyce, Edward Hirsch, Joanne Kyger, James Longenbach, Shane McCrae, Jamaal May, Hoa Nguyen, Dzvinia Orlowsky, Danielle Pafunda, Kristin Prevallet, Kit Robinson, Andrew Schelling, Jean Valentine, and Rachel Zucker, among many others.
Founded in 1976, making it one of the nation’s oldest continuously published literary journals, SRPR takes seriously the literary magazine’s historical role as a site for community building—not the creation of a clique or a club, but of a capacious, diverse, and committed community wherein readers and contributors feel at once safe and surprised.
Poetry Daily Depends on You
With your support, we make reading the best contemporary poetry a treasured daily experience. Consider a contribution today.
