Spicaresque:

A Spanglish blog dedicated to the works, ruminations, and mongrel pyrotechnics of Yago S. Cura, an Argentine-American poet, translator, publisher & futbol cretin. Yago publishes Hinchas de Poesia, an online literary journal, & is the sole proprietor of Hinchas Press.

Tuesday, July 28, 2009

SOME BERLIN GRAF & STENCILS TO IMPRESS ME LADS





ROUGH DRAFT OF POEM FOR AFRICANAMERICAN.COM

I came to Harlem a piquant divorcee with half my shit.
Preceded, of course, by a retinue of pink slips and illegible contracts.
My body was not accustomed to being sore, my bed a pilfered rook.

I was in the World in a very expensive little box, utilities included.
The security grates outside my window had Ashanti crescents and hinges
that groaned like barrels of vuvusellas.
But, I could scope World from third-story; I could sniper down
my very own Strivers' Row Tarmac.

I rove-owned from Adam Clayton to Frederick Douglas on the proscenium the planners had designated One Hundred Thirty-Seven Street. But, I couldn't smoke in the house
so let us say that I broke stride polishing flaneur tropes.

But I am not black nor African-American. I do not belong in Harlem
perhaps. After I was situated, my parents said flat-out, we worked so hard
so you wouldn't have to live in a place like that. Then, Harlem's terra incognito
voodoos the other half, the non-black, the non-African-American.

In Harlem that other half of non-black does not exist. Harlem is black like it is
African-American, pro-Black, over-Black, through-Black. You want to see how Black
Harlem is, change your voting district blanquitos and come to vote with World.

Spanish speaking people love to amnesia the period of African Arabs
because that puts their blood kissing cousins with the African continent
and we got enough on our hands with the whole mestizo thing, 'aight.

But I am not black nor African-American.I do not belong in Harlem
perhaps because the persuasion of my dermis is too faint for the bigots
in Harlem, but what could I do to prove that my skin's cool.

How do I dare write a tease on what it means to be Black in the U.S.?
Why are we not Black-Americans without the Africa overture?
And, what if I hate Africans because they food smell weird and possibly
eat kittens when they can't catch rats, and they still throw spears!

Monday, July 27, 2009

HONEYMOON IN BERLIN





(Click on thumbnail to see pic!)
For those of you who didn't know, my wife and I just went on our honeymoon. We traveled to Berlin and stayed in Prenzl'berg for thirteen glorious days. We made friends and fell in love with Berlin. We would like to start you out with a couple of pics of the apartment we rented on Oderbergerstrasse, about two hundred meters from Maur Park. We rented from a couple that are transplants from London, a city equally rude, dingy, and uncivilized as New York City. He is a musician and music journalist and she is a photographer; they have amazing taste and we want to thank them for sharing their home with us. If you like what you see or would like me to connect you with them, please send me an email or reply to this post.

Thursday, July 9, 2009

MY WIFE AND I TRANSLATE "SKETCH IN THE SAND" FROM OLIVERIO GIRONDO, AN ARGENTINE POET OF THE 20's and 30's


SKETCH IN THE SAND

The morning is passed on the beach, dusted by the sun.

Arms.
Amputated legs.
Bodies that reintegrate.
Floating craniums of tire tread.

As the bathers turn their bodies, the waves elongate their nautical shavings over the beach of sawdust that is the beach itself.

Everything is gold and blue!

The shade of the tarps. The eyes of the girls that inject themselves with novels and horizons. My happiness, of shoes with rubber soles, which make me bounce on the sand.

For .80¢ photographers sell the bodies of the women who bathe.

There are bodegas that exploit the dramatic nature of the breaking. Broody maids. Irascible siphons with sea extracts! Breakers and rocks with algaed breasts of mariners and hearts painted with a fencer’s foil.

Gangs of seagulls that fake their flight, destroyed by a white piece of paper.

And, before everything, that sea!

MY WIFE AND I TRANSLATE "PEDESTRIAN" FROM OLIVERIO GIRONDO, AN ARGENTINE POET OF THE 20's and 30's


PEDESTRIAN

At the end of the street, a municipal building breathes in the city’s diesel.

The shadows break the spine of thresholds; they lay down to fornicate on the sidewalk.

With an arm fixed on the wall, a darkened street lamp has the convex vision of those that pass in cars.

The looks of the transients dirty the things that are exhibited in the shop windows, the legs that hang under the hoods of the victories get skinny.

Next to the sidewalk, a bodega has just finished swallowing whole a human.

A church that is identical to a street lamp, passes; a train that is a school on wheels; a dog used to failure with hooker eyes that shame us as we watch and pass.

All of a sudden: the watchman on the corner detains in one sudden stroke all the trembling of the city, so that we may hear in one solid gulp, the murmur of all breasts as they are scraped.

Wednesday, July 8, 2009

MY WIFE AND I TRANSLATE "EXVOTO" FROM OLIVERIO GIRONDO, AN ARGENTINE POET OF THE 20's and 30's


EXVOTO

The girls of Flores have sweet eyes like the sugar-encrusted almonds of Café Molino and they use silk ribbons to suck in their butts at the altar of the butterfly.

The girls of Flores stroll arm in arm to transmit their trembling, and if someone looks them square in the pupil they clamp their legs shut—afraid that their sex will fall on the sidewalk.

When it gets dark, they hang their “green” breasts over the steel balconies so that their dresses bruise them in the nude. At night, towered by their mothers, they stroll through Flores Park so that men may ejaculate words into their ears and light up their breasts like intermittent light bugs.

The girls of Flores live with the anxiety that their asses will rot like apples left on the radiator and the desire of men suffocates them so much that they would wish to abort that desire as if it were a corset.

Because they have neither the courage to cut their bodies into morsels nor the gumption to distribute samples to those who stroll the boulevards.