por Lindsay Marin

Ahi Nos Quedamos
 
Sales a caminar no importa la hora,
Se te suelta el nudo al pisar en el charco,
El movimiento alrededor se acaba,
Las vibraciones de las cuerdas transmiten,
Música brindada por la orquesta voladora,
Brisas en la pista amplia,
Escaleras hechas de nubes,
Desciendo, el baile eterno.

Invitación
 
Viajemos sin urgencia,
Pisemos por diamantes abundantes,
Marcadas por el grito del sol,
Magnificadas por el cabello de la tierra,
Se llega a la catarata,
Que deja espumas intocables,
Al míralas, te concentras en el centro,
Y ves el diamante,
Algo fascinante,
El antecedente del río farsante.

Seguimos Corriendo
 
Lo más que corremos,
Lo más que alcancemos a correr,
La cuerda sigue arrastrando,
Varios cayéndose en la grama,
Quien decidió competir en el concreto,
Pedazos de grama rodeados en la pista,
Recogidas por el arbitraje,
Para no dejar respirar,
El cielo nunca nos abandonará,
Lo único que no se deja tapar.

Lindsay Marin works in clinical research in New York City. He is a recent graduate of Rutgers University where he majored in Microbiology. He is of Colombian background and currently resides in New Jersey. This is his first poetry submission.

Heartburn
 
Yesterday I discovered what anaemia is:
quiet snowflakes turned the sky pale,
the grass capped in frost or is it called escaracha?
I whisper the word and try to hold on to it,
the way my tongue pushes against my teeth.
The day my mother departed,
cold moved in and innocence was frozen,
along with my meaning of all those words:


mami,              madré.             hija,                 niña


tongue-tied something got lost in translation.
They’ve given me iron to strengthen me,
if only it could forge us back together.
I try to eat my way back to you, so much flesh and blood.
I try to recover every dish you made me but I’m
still hungry, surrounded by empty plates
and the aroma of what was served.
Waves of indigestion chase me out of a dream.



Foreign
 
They’ve sampled my tradition in a spoonful,
too curious to refuse.
 
I’m a buffet laid out, my language colourful,
a sea teeming with strange delights,
 
that laps at their ears
the edge of their understanding.
 
It could be smooth sailing, I’ve heard,
but I feel a storm in the air
 
caught between hot and cold, clouded
partitions create boundaries
 
between concrete and abstract
why must there be one or the other?
 
I’ve always been good at balancing
the two from my head to my heart.
 
They say they care but I can’t read
their lips. I beg at their table
 
like wasps or flies trying to snatch back

pieces they’ve appropriated, I end up starved.



Time Machine

Spying an aeroplane smooth and silver
far above land, between space and rock,
living              two                  lives:
 
above sea-level, afraid of heights
saddled by a dialect, my tongue
blooms with foreign wounds,
 
I long to return to the shallows of the sea –
floating – or taste the crust of an arepa,
salted like your skin.  Touch down
 
on a landing strip and stake claim
to abandoned places with starfruit trees
shining ripe, straining to be plucked.
 
Let’s return: we’ll tread the wide, once
teeming asphalt, still hot from the sun.
Jet-lagged, no one will notice how much
 

                   we’ve changed.

​TAK Erzinger copyright 2023 from the collection Tourist (Sea Crow Press, Massachusetts)

"Orphan," "The Landing," "The Food's Delicious, You're Not Welcome," "The Contrition Between US" excerpted from at the foot of the mountain by Tak Erzinger.

Orphan

When your mother decides to leave,
do you tell the world?

What if everyone thinks it’s your fault?

You could pretend it didn’t happen,
never talk about it and over-compensate with many things, become an awesome painter
share your artwork full of hidden meaning.

Maybe people will forget to ask.

It will push you to develop in ways you never imagined, maybe ways she would’ve been proud of, if she’d been around.

Like how you can really dance, the way she could always dance, the way you followed her steps to the beats of all the albums she bought you,
holding hands, she’d swing you around and around, pulling you close and pushing you back,
keeping you spinning,
you’d hear, I’ll always be there for you.

It’s not what she said though.

​She was only singing.




The Landing

When they tell you, you’ve
had a nervous breakdown
you become like an astronaut

you find yourself drifting,
pleading for someone to provide you
with the right equipment.

In the right space
you can deploy like the Eagle
confronting the “magnificent desolation” resolutely.

To be able to sink your feet into the
lunatic surface will be a revelation
tip-toeing through craters formed

long before you were born.
If you run low on fuel
at least you will have finally seen

what those wounds look like
up close and personal and like
the dark side of the moon

allow the parts unseen to be
tucked back into the envelope
of your universe.

The discovery-
every exploration takes time
and patience.



​The Food’s Delicious, You’re Not Welcome

Once adults become a certain age
it’s a matter of time before they reminisce
to talk of the past
and say it was better

Ethnic food piled high
they’ll question Why, dear friend,
aren’t you afraid?
and lick their lips in satisfaction

It requires a stranger, light-skinned
without a funny surname
to offer up dishes, exotic recipes
on familiar ground

This individual, welcomed like a pet
loves the taste of cheeseburgers
heats up the grill
to fire up their lies

The irony of being accepted
the memory of a childhood
chewing her up and spitting her out
just a little taste

garlic sautéed softens
too much spice can ruin the meal
adulting in measured cups
does not guarantee the right flavour

The common denominator loves the food
but does that mean its balanced?
I’ve learnt to share those dishes while I continue
to get burned in places unseen and am
left with scorched pans, unable to replace them.



The Contrition Between Us

We are like two cats circling,
insecure, heated, fearful.

Each one vying for his place,
seeds that have scattered haphazardly

breaking cracks in the cement,
vulnerable and strong at the same time.

It’s like we’ve forgotten what brought
us to this place: the promises,

like a wide and clear spring sky, its
passing clouds, whispers tucked under

our pillows. The scent of love lingers,
over empty plates and glasses, still warm

from the summer’s evening sun
easing the tension, making us forget

​a moment about the family we will never
have.

TAK Erzinger is an American/Swiss poet and artist with a Colombian background. Her poetry has been featured in Bien Acompañada from Cornell University, The Muse from McMaster University, River and South Review, Wilkes University and more.  Her debut chapbook entitled, “Found: Between the Trees” was published by Grey Border Books, Canada 2019. Her then, unpublished poetry manuscript “At the Foot of the Mountain” was short-listed by the Eyelands Book Awards 2019 and Willow Run Book Awards 2020. It has now been published by Floricanto Press out of California, 2021.  Her first audio drama Stella’s Constellation has been produced by Alt.Stories and Fake Realities Podcasts, out of the UK.
​She lives in a Swiss valley with her husband and cats.

Call me Niña
NO,
Pinta,
NO,
Santa Maria
Maybe just Maria... Don’t call me santa I’m not a saint.
 
When I die:
Anoint my lips with mango juice and a little bit of warm aguapanela, so that even in death
I’ll think of my mother.
Wrap me in hojas de platano como un tamal, and float me down the Magdalena.
Float with Magdalena.
Mary and Magdalene. Mary Magdalene.

I’ve lost track of what I look like.
My skin, hair, eyes, lips, nose.
Just rooms full of Marias
Let’s pretend I don’t exist,
Then you don’t have to call me anything at all.
 
When I was 18:
my boyfriend at the time told me he liked that we were in an interracial relationship.
That I was exotic. Unlike other girls.
Standing at the kitchen sink I took a second, then a breath.
The soap dish slithered from my hands, sending shards both seen and unseen.
All these years I thought we grew together, roots entangled but
mine had built bars around me, for safe keeping
while his had built a pedestal from which to better observe me.
 
Inside, in the place I can’t reach, but only feel.
I was the hand in front of my own face.
I had seen converging rivers, while he had seen–
well I don’t even know,
When we had sex I could only ever cum if I was on top.
That’ll show him.
Show him what?
 
I’ve lost track of what I look like.
 
At 21:
I slept with a woman, she was like me.
Don’t tell my mother. Don’t break her heart.
I let her lips close ‘round the roundness of my–
My lips on the wetness of her–
Ran my tongue down the valley-
I thought I saw–
***
God. Oh god.
Salt of my salt.
Afterwards we lay in bed together, thighs pressed against thighs and
I had to swallow hard at the lump in my throat when I realized
I couldn’t really love her because
I couldn’t love myself.
 
What do I look like?
 
Somewhere in the middle of the ocean of time and space there’s a transatlantic graveyard where drums reverberate in cool Atlantic waters.
Even after all this time,
We carry those rhythms in the beating of hearts, the beating of dancing steps.
These trees have been ripped out, roots raw and bloody seeking fertile grounds,
These roots seeking the warmth of a familiar sun,
The warmth of a familiar song.

I tried to grow on this rocky presbyterian mountain range, but no matter how much you water,
Guava trees will never give apples. ​