Three Poems by Vidaluz Meneses

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The new skirt, the vague gesture
cigarette in hand,
the daily inversion of time
intranscendent;
its emptiness pointing at us,
making us feel like parasites,
spider weaver of a useless web
that wraps and suffocates us.

Homey April

Homey & sunny April

—death for water—
the seers predict unanimously.
& it looks like its going to rain fire from
                                                    heaven
It’s already raining fire in the mountains.
Nor do the birth cries reach us.
But the cry has the quietness of death
& in the morning only one cut of wind
dry & hoarse split the sky in two.
They say they throw them from above.

December 7*

The solitary insurrection of the poet**
traps me here.
Sunday the seventh boomed
by rockets, bombs & fireworks,
the bedroom & its radial background of slow music.

For a while you turn into the
girl from Cartagena because it’s flattering
to be named only for yourself.

You take up the chant, the whole dream,
the imagined & realized
in this booming night,
in full revolution of the ’80s
everything revolving inside you,
giving birth to that other woman
who loves & fears her new freedom.


* Eve of the Immaculate conception– a major popular religious celebration in Nicaragua
** La Insurreccion Solitaria, Carlos Martinez Riva’s book, published in 1952