Where on the spectrum of loyalty and betrayal does song begin? And where does it end? I think each writer has to decide this over and over.
—
Sharon Olds
So You Understand Once and For All by Miguel Huezo Mixco
- Two Poems by Daisy Zamora
- Two Poems by Daniel Flores y Ascencio
- Cockenoe by David Rattray
- The Hidden Anguish of the Mouseketeers by Gary Indiana
- Spring Training by Glenn O'Brien
- Not Many by Isabel de los Ángeles Ruano
- From “San Francisco Libre” by Isidro Fuentes Castillo
- Whatever Happens by Jacek Gulla
- He Watched Me by James Purdy
- Three Reels from Guatemala by Janet Rodney
- Cemetary by Joaquin Pasos
- The Following Myth of Romantic Suffering Has to be Done Away With by Kathy Acker
- Strands by Kimiko Hahn
- Three Poems by Leonel Rugama
- Three Poems by Margaret Randall
- To Fernando by Michele Najlis
- So You Understand Once and For All by Miguel Huezo Mixco
- Two Poems by Otto René Castillo
- During the Mornings by Raquel Melendez
- Deudas (Doubts) by Reina Maria Rodriguez
- Five Poems by Roque Dalton
- 8 by Roberto Obregon
- Enigmatic Salts by Roberto Sosa
- Estare aqui (I will be here) by Rene Castilla R.
- Five Poems by Rosario Murillo
- To Roosevelt by Rubén Darío
- Three Poems by Vidaluz Meneses
- Acceptance Speech by Julio Cortázar
- Dark Love by Aaron Zuckerman
- Two Poems by Ana Ilce
- Two Poems by April Bernard
- In the High Ceiling of Stars by Bradford Morrow
- Not Only the Smile Was Seen: Caprice by Carlos Martinez Rivas
- Laments in Space by Clementina Suárez
First Proof
- Warriors Have Funny Heads by Francesc Torres
- Untitled Photograph by Gianfranco Gorgoni
- Christ in the 21st Century by Gin Taylor
- Escena Campestre by Hilda Vogl
- Palm Sunday, Century City | L.A. by Hope Sandrow
- Red Mask by Hunt Slonem
- Jack by Ira Richer
- Completion of the Circle by Italo Scanga
- Open (Entrance/Exit) #2 by James Ford
- Montezuma by James Nares
- Seated Woman by James Perry Walker
- Three Photographs by Jean-Marie Simon
- Untitled Drawing by Jim Kopp
- Elios Bailan by June Beer
- Blind Man’s Bluff by Vitaly Komar & Alexander Melamid
- Keon by Lan Payne
- The Long Prayer I, II by Lee Quinones
- Ancestor by Luis Frangella
- Ranas by Maka
- Two Photographs by Manuel Alvarez Bravo
- Two Paintings by Martha Diamond
- Nkrigom by Nick Ghiz
- Untitled Painting by Pam Wye
- San Pedro Lake, Atitlán Guatemala by Phyllis Galembo
- Death Flaunts Its Lover by Richard Hoffmann
- Untitled Photograph by Amanda Means
- Protection en la Tormenta by Carlos Arias Vicuna
- Macho Raton con Paisajes by Carlos Montenegro
- Woyzek by Edward Brezinski
- The Mad Sea Captain Charts a Course Up the Amazon by Richard Mock
- Two Sculptures by Ruth Vollmer
- Three Photographs by Susan Meiselas
- Camellian by Tina Girouard
- Female Acrobats by Tom Otterness
- Sketches by Joe Lewis
More
Ruth Vollmer, Musical Forest, 1961, 9½ inches diameter. Courtesy Jack Tilton Gallery, New York.
Because writing is also being with you
and the country,
near its monuments
and the urgencies of bread and love,
writing is not walking away,
it is rescuing oneself and rescuing you,
carrying you with me to the country to which you close your eyes
and because writing is that,
it’s hard and everything else:
that doors close
and hands to be shaken are denied
forging iron in another way.
Because the country is not our home alone
because you look where you know
you won’t see its bloodied corpse.
Because writing is not taking a flight
nor putting out the lights,
it is loving and forgiving, making good promises and condemning,
looking everywhere for ways
to smash my heart against yours
and broken-hearted not waiting tranquilly for the future
but going on to set new fires
because writing is loving you and carrying forward with everyone the, war.
Translated from the Spanish by Zoë Anglesey and Daniel Flores Ascencio.
Related
Staging historical justice in Hernán Ronsino’s Glaxo
“A writer worried about reception is cooking a dead book. A writer’s job is to produce the best possible book in absolute freedom, so the category ‘acceptable’ does not play in the process at all.”
From the train I could look out onto the infinite blue of the sea. I was still exhausted, wakeful from the overnight transatlantic flight to Rome, but looking out at the sea, that Mediterranean sea that was so infinite and so blue, made me forget it all, even myself. I don’t know why.
Originally published in
BOMB 9,
Spring 1984
Nicolas Echevarria, Pam Yates, art by James Nares and Tom Otterness, writing by Daisy Zamora, Kathy Acker, Glenn O’Brien, and more.
