This Translation Tuesday, we bring to you four poems by the Puerto Rican poet Jonatan María Reyes that focus on the minutiae of place and neighbourhood. Resembling photographic snapshots of everyday urban scenes looked at from the different hours of a day, these poems stare at flies, neon signs, garbage bags, dryers. They stare, through the modest crack that each short line pries open, at “what lives / in the background” to borrow the language of Shannon Barnes’s evocative translation, “and demands / of the system another / kind of resistance.”
1.3
a fine steam bursts
from underground.
sparks fly from the neon light
of a giant sign.
somebody at the bus stop
eats cheetos and licks
their orange fingers.
random newspaper pages
crunch and float through the air.
they’re later lost.
a green liquid seeps
out of a garbage bag.
it leaks slowly and flows
towards the sewer.
someone gets off a bus
puts gum in their mouth
and pretends that
everything stops there
Situations
scrap piled in a corner.
various rats sort through it.
an old guy in a rusty car
sniffing glue
so he doesn’t tear apart.
cellophane wrapped around
a lit lamp, the only
thing visible in an
empty apartment.
a lady with her head
covered in foil
waters her plants.
a giant sign coated in moss
and with blown out lights
enjoys its old euphoria.
you hear: a gunshot, popcorn
popping, a bullet tearing
into flesh, the mouth chewing
popcorn, the bullet bursting out
popcorn being swallowed.
the most terrible silence follows,
occasionally interrupted by things
thrown from buildings
bouncing on impact
1.10
we unfold some beach
chairs on the balcony
soak our bodies in Off
shoo away some
mosquitos. the chairs
are made of plastic
are fragile, but the
power line
is more fragile.
it hums as if
it were made of
the mosquitos
we drive away.
at least the foam
cooler stays strong
keeps the ice cool
like what lives
in the background
and demands
of the system another
kind of resistance
Some hours in el barrio
a few neighbors play ping pong
and eat fried chicken
on the sidewalk.
the laundromat is full
of people watching
the rotation of the dryers.
strangers speak
briefly at gas stations
and supermarkets.
from midnight on
the sidewalk turns
into a slippery track.
the garbage truck
begins its route
goes all over.
the flies seem to burn
in the air. a little later,
the speed against the
stationary object
doesn’t mean a damn
Translated from the Spanish by Shannon Barnes
Jonatan María Reyes is a Puerto Rican poet and screenwriter born in Santurce, Puerto Rico. He is the author of Perdíamos la gracia y el verano (Fedora Editores, 2016), Data de otro ardor (Verbum, Spain, 2018), Databending (Barnacle, Argentina, 2019), and Lo común también cruje (La Impresora, Puerto Rico, 2020 / Herring Publishers, México, 2020). He was awarded the XI International Poetry Prize “Gastón Baquero” and was named an inaugural Letras Boricuas Fellow by Flamboyan Foundation. Some of his works have been translated into Italian, Greek, English, French, and Portuguese. He edits the poetry magazine Low-fi ardentía.
Shannon Barnes is a translator and Spanish Instructor from Hamilton, Ohio. She is the translator of “1.3,” “Situations,” “1.10,” and “Some hours in el barrio,” poems by Puerto Rican poet Jonathan María Reyes. Shannon earned her M.A. in Spanish and a graduate certificate in translation and interpretation from the University of Louisville. She also received her B.A. in Spanish from Miami University, where she is currently employed. While Shannon is not teaching or translating, she spends her time working towards a second M.A. in instructional design & technology.
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