The journey of the night
is lost in the sacrifice.

Each silence is a goodbye
at the river’s bank

out in the open
of the pending geographies.

Every burning darkness
it's a space on earth

every body is a rain chest
emerging in the candor of love.

Every silence is a sacrifice
of the moon's prophecies.

Each cave is a nocturnal room
where the goddesses stir

the origin of the world between the sea.

The stars inhabit
in the charts of gardens.

Thunder runs away from the flesh
and the echoes resemble entranced pomegranates.

There is nothing sweeter,
and there is nothing more bitterly
than the memory of the present.

The nudity of the goddesses’
reveals an unending migration.

Each rock is a palpitation.
Each absence a geology of names.

Their bodies are filled with the orgy of fig trees.

Each displacement remembers the flesh
of paradise, tenderness and longing.

Is it possible to say farewell to geographies full of forgone steps.
Is it possible to say goodbye to watercolor landscapes.

They rise through the staircase
to the earth, to the sky and to the sea.

Fog covers their bodies
they are filled with returns and lost loves.

Everything is invisible,
even the stars keep the light.

Naked from their shoulders down
they feel the water by the shore

and learn to master an unknown alphabet.

The moon opens its humid eyelashes.
Her naked breasts
dance every night with melancholic dolphins.

The shadows chisel her body,
the soaked foam from octopus and sponges
gave birth to her name, goddess of the universe.

Aphrodite never imagined her birth in Paphos
would bring sadness to the sailors
neither did she imagined that her beautiful back
would make the sea mist jealous.

In the darkness, she looks for Ares
so she can satisfy the hollow vastness of her desire.

Aphrodite is the most stunning goddess
reigning the firmament.
Her almond lips
with a taste of earth and sea
makes humans feel misguided sensations.

She is the foam, who originates from the foam.
When the nights cuddle to the rhythm of the waves,
she fully intimates with the inside of her volatile universe.

Narcissus abandons Echo
and she screams into the heated night.

Nemesis is the migration
of shadows.

She cries vengeance
through fire’s blaze.

She can seduce Narcissus anytime.

Her body covered by moons
prods her to avenge Echo.

She holds the key-
can open any body.

Nemesis is the goddess of strength. She cuts through ice
with her art of awareness and seduction.

She carries a candle wrapped with cords from the moon,
the movement of her breath resembles a tree.

Her body’s scent draws from naked seaweed
and lures awakened birds.

Narcissus died because of his love for Nemesis.

The mythical tremor is nameless.
Mystery has no fleeting secrets.

The goddess wanders through relentless corners
of the vast cosmos.

The rain soaks her so she can feel the roar
of waves, and give birth

to Helen of Troy.
From her fervent body the hip of the universe is born.

From Diosas prestadas/ Borrowed Goddesses (2019)

In nights like this one, I start to search
the bones, the blood, the hands. These nights
make me reach through an empty step,
they make me caress the vacant space
of a cloud. I ask to borrow an eraser,
and in nights like these I’ll erase the moon, the clouds,
and the memory. With a giant pencil I’ll draw your space
to fill with my body who seeks the moon
within the bones, within the blood, within surviving
nights. This clarity, I have not felt,
underneath the granite lamp.

From Meditar de sirenas (2019)
Translated by María Ximena Vásquez

The eagle’s gaze
appears at mid-night
ignited by a lantern
of fireflies.

It arrives like a bird disinclined to distance.
Gathers geraniums in the dark
while silence falls to the side.
Feels the pulse in the middle finger,
and collects the skin's ghosts in a breath.

It finds the thumb
fastened to a ripe fig,
and feels the union of the fingers,
the throbbing of the earth,
where I am not myself,
but the silence of the stars,
the clamor of the firmament
the grasshoppers’ leap,
the chatter of the citrus trees.

The eagle sets its claws on the window,
his eyes passing me the omen,
fear makes me sway in that alluring and timid night.

I will call for my kin
that have left,
I will call for my wings missing on nights like these
I will ask for the words
of other ages.

His eyes speak the language of other worlds,
eternal silences emerge
and I am not myself,
but the bird of magic and presage
behind the glass.

From Barro blasfemo
Translated by Diego Fernández

Amid the multitudes of shadows
at times I see you at the origin
of the room that stands next to the rain.
And I see you
mending the memories of the war
with a needle and a light bulb.

I see you in each thread forgetting your past
like a fish in the air,
I see how your eyes reddened by the black thread
in the black sock hollowed of memory,
I see you frail from wearing the same mended sock.

When I ask you
about those times in Charlottenburg
or some other street in Berlin.
You leave me with so many questions
unanswered.

How you escaped from the camps
of deranged blood.

You fall silent like a Trappist monk
and change the subject.
You go back to the light bulb
to the difficulty of mending the same old sock.

You speak of the voltage of unfamiliar mailboxes,
without an end.

I try to gather the threads from the floor
but with your sole you step on my finger
like a memory of your traverse.

From: Manzanilla del insomnio (2003)
Trans. Ivonne Gordon Vailakis & Diego Fernández

Don’t call me foreigner, illegal
don't call me any other name
because I see that in your body
runs blood the same as mine.

Don't call me any other name
because I am clay that fuses
in smoke and turns into
a faraway land
of my people, their beans and tortillas
heating up in the same wood stove of time
that smells like smoke of desert kindling
don't call me alien or foreigner
since I can’t touch the same ground
that my grandparents' feet caressed.

Don't call me illegal
because I come from a place south of your birth
where the mangos grow and sorrows ripen
don't call me illegal or Spic or Mexican
don't call me any other name
because in the broth of life
I cultivate the vegetables
and sow hope with my back
that aches every day
so you can fill your belly with that broth
seasoned with the salt of my sweat
seasoned with the blood of my footprints.

Don't call me
anything at all
don't call me
no face of the other side
don't call me nothing
because others make themselves afraid
of the dark running wave of my people
they close borders
and put out the bitter razor wire.

Don't call me foreigner, stranger
because I speak another tongue
that vibrates like the root of beast.

Don’t call me nothing
because you and I are brick and clay
call me by my first name
call me by my birth name
call me
brother.

From Colibries en el exilio, Hummingbirds in Exile (1997)

Words hide themselves in the reverberation of the forest.
The instinct of the sun makes no sense through my veins.
Like a rebellious goddess, she arouses me from an invisible drowsiness.
The light of the sun slides through my skin.
The period has no measure in the riddle of the forest.
The mystery advances with delirium, amidst the plurality
of voices.

A secret lodges itself in the ellipsis
the dream eclipses my body
into yours.
The suns multiply themselves in thousands of eyelids.
Green conceals us as fluid dreams. Without a period
without a comma, we suspend from the lung
of the wind. The burnt stone, our witness
blesses the sacredness of our name,
the seed of scent
of touch
blindly brings us close.

We are humans disguised as forest.

From Danza inoportuna
Translated by author, Ivonne Gordon

I am word,
I am silence,
I am the border between Europe and America.
I am a mestiza,
I am tongue, and I am time. I am border;
I am the border between the Colossus of the North, and the Ariel of the South.
I am everything and nothing,
I am that and I am not it.
I am the wind and the flute.
I am a piece of Ecuadorian clay mixed with German pottery.
All bloods flow through me, all united;
all bloods are one with me.
My womb is the border;
my womb is the border between Ecuador,
Greece, and the United States.
My identity lies in the sole of my feet and in my toenails.

My identity is crossing the border.
The border is to leave one’s motherland,
to cross, and step into some else’s land.
It is a sensation of banishment,
it is exiled,
it is a diaspora,
all is one.
It is the language that mixes with others,
it is life in constant change,
that is the border.
My identity is always to feel emptiness in my womb.
I find balance in the pose of the tree
I find possibilities,
and sometimes I find eighty-four of them.
I want to see the future in the past.
I try to find myself in time
through the reflection of the sun rays
on the star of my mirror.
I am the reflection on the other side,
I don’t know myself. I
am not that face,
I am her, and I am not.
Words inhabit inside of me.
Words come alive in my waterlogged body.
That is how poems are born.
They are born from desire, from cravings,
from a gaze
from a window,
from a voyage through the memory.
Poetry is word,
a memory that arises from a past never lived,
maybe a memory from a premature childhood.
Poetry is memory and silence,
it is memory, recalling the the body from the top of the head to the tip of the toes.
Words live inside the body.
I am the sphinx raising its chest,
I am the tiger licking her tail,
I am Budda praying in Hebrew,
I am a tree pretending to be an eagle.
I am silence.


Poem appeared in Chicana/Latina Literary Journal (2014)
Translated by author, Ivonne Gordon

Words hide themselves in the reverberation of the forest.

The sun slides through my skin. Like a rebellious goddess,

she arouses me from an invisible drowsiness.

The mystery advances with delirium, amidst the plurality

of voices. A secret lodges itself in the ellipsis.The dream eclipses my body into yours.The suns multiply themselves in thousands of eyelids.

Green disguises us as fluid dreams.

We suspend from the lung of the wind.

The burnt stone, our witness, blesses the sacredness

of our name. The seed of touch blindly brings us close

to the foliage of a tree which secretes the scent of time.


Poem appeared in Black Sun Lit (2016)
Translated by Cindy Rinne

The earthenware vessel preserves eternity.
We lie in the presence of its smooth walls.
We discover the faces, the names
of nomadic bodies before noon.
We are nomads roaming the cities, erased
in petrified places.
We are the name beyond clay.
We are the gesture beyond silence.
We are the bridge between truth
and the path. We are the awakened dream
of clay. We wander in the movement
of the circle to return as clay
in the earthenware vessel of air and of livable root.

Poem appeared in Black Sun Lit (2016)
Translated by Cindy Rinne

I don't ask for much, I don't ask for anything.
I only request a mahogany armoire
carved by sirens who lived thousands of years ago.
I don't ask for much, I don't ask for anything.
I only want a copper key
that will fit in the keyhole of a naked dream.
I don't ask for much, I don't ask for anything. I only ask
to store away illusions in one of the nocturnal drawers
of the armoire. And at the bottom, to lose the salt of the visible,
and garnish fresh constellations of dawn
at every corner of the armoire.
I don't ask for much I don't ask for anything. Only
to open my eyes and get a wink from the other side,
to be able to invent the prophesy of the sirens,
and cover the armoire with the gaze
that flows from my hypnotized eyes.
I only ask for a see-through thread
so I can sew rapidly the invisible gauze
of a restless face.

Nothing is necessary, nor remembrance, nor forgetfulness.
In everything lies nothing. That is, nothing and everything.
Water stirs just with the mere thought of feeling forgetfulness.
Water trembles. Forgetfulness does not exist, it was manufactured
in an clandestine place. False merchants created it, they wanted
to negotiate with the sacredness of love, they invented it
in a secret room, all based on false, secret chemical combinations,
forgetfulness. How can we forget, if the aroma lives forever
like gusts of nothingness.

Translated by author, Ivonne Gordon