Before bird whistles break the pre-dawn silence,
The first bullet burrows and rounds and rounds more,
The quick knife blade stopped by bone,
Before light gives power to leaves to spark,
The yells of contempt that no other living things can make,
The first ones, face-down to the ground,
Before any child cries hungry,
The first child shot, and infants opened by a stab,
The first awake to a grenade’s aftermath,
Before a woman plaits ribbons with hair,
The first gathered, lined up and mowed down
The first woman stripped for rape,
Before night’s creatures have a chance to hide,
The first woman to smell her slit womb.
The first arm up to fling a branch or throw a stone,
Before a man cinches his pants with faja and its luck of symbols,
The first ones inhale the smoke,
The first ones die,
Before any eye shows its fear,
The oldest of the elders crumple by easy blows,
The last ones alive left for dead,
Before any time to hide the children, to shield their sight,
The ears and testicles and breasts left bleeding into earth
The open eyes of the dead,
Before any chance for a word,
The spent mortar shells, their after-pall of sulfur,
The burnt air, the memory of napalm,
Before one can see in daylight,
The unit trained to kill, wet under the armpits,
In retreat, their backs to curses,
Before any know to listen
A Cessna jets a final crossover
Ahead of its squealing entrails.
Zoë Anglesey’s book, Something More Than Force: Poems for Guatemala, 1971–1982 received honorable mention from the 1983 Before Columbus Foundation’s American Book Awards. Her translations of poems and short fiction from some of the most renowned young writers of Central America will appear in Fiction International.
Giménez Smith’s latest collection of poems, Be Recorder, engages the lyric tradition as well as spoken word to reveal the complexity of citizenship.
The poet on the politics of the gaze, the migratory act of reading, the anxiety of bilingualism, and the universality of shame.
Two poets reflect on colonialism, iconoclastic writers, and the political dimensions of translating literature under authoritarianism.
Originally published in
Cindy Sherman, Dario Fo, Bruce Weber, Lisa Fonssagrives-Penn, and Raymond Voinquel.
Let me tell you first about what it was like being a Black woman poet in the ‘60s, from jump. It meant being invisible. It meant being really invisible. It meant being doubly invisible as a Black feminist woman and it meant being triply indivisible as a Black lesbian and feminist.
Audre Lorde
