translated from the Spanish
From the book Mujeres Errantes/Wandering Women
My grandmother drops her skirt; her mons is a nest of feathers, her branching feet two twigs from a tree. She pauses before speaking as birds sprout down there: “I will be night guardian,” she tells my sister and me. After dinner she tucks us into bed. Before falling asleep, we ask her to tell us, again, about the time a woman asked her to be a lookout: “There were knocks on my door. She was dressed in tattered rags, fleeing. I gave her chestnuts to eat; she drank milk. They were pursuing her, three towns away, for turning their rams into stew. She said she let it simmer all night. I laughed. We were going to starve to death—among owls, we must tend our wings— then she touched me on the shoulder.”
A woman gathers up her skirt in the forest. Her flimsy legs are branches or an insect made of stalks and stubble. She undresses. She squats and unloosens on her back—the sound of an umbrella opening—a pair of wings. She flies off in search of butter to absentmindedly taste, in dairies or freshly prepared by fairies. With her olive tree ears and her hare feet, when night falls she swiftly jumps the fence to sip warm cow’s milk.
woman / earth woman / earth blood woman / cycle blood earth / full moon night / red moon / earth blood cycle / night star woman / hand belly lips / eyes womb lips / beast wings moon / death shadow / hunger moon / fire beast scream / night songs / wing eyes / vertigo scream jaws / sky star influence / earth mother seed / earth mother woman / earth grave womb / death word song / wings tongue eyes / broom hoof cauldron / animal woman / flight woman / owl / bird / mermaid / mother woman embryo / lips vulva breasts / womb sex hands / word heart star / desert ocean.
Del libro Damas errantes
Mi abuela dejó caer su falda, su pubis era un nido de plumas y sus pies bifurcados, ramitas de un árbol. Hizo una pausa antes de hablar, mientras le brotaban aves allí abajo: “Seré guardiana nocturna”, nos dijo a mi hermana y a mí. Nos arropó después de cenar. Antes de dormir le pedimos que nos contara, otra vez, cuando una mujer la volvió centinela: “Tocaron a la puerta. Era una desarrapada, huía. Le di de comer castañas; bebió leche. La perseguían a tres aldeas de distancia, por haber convertido en estofado a los carneros. Dijo que cocinó toda la noche. Reí. Íbamos a morir de hambre, entre lechuzas debemos cuidar nuestras alas, luego tocó mi hombro”.
En el bosque una mujer recoge su falda. Sus piernas endebles, de rama o de insecto hecho de rastrojo. Se desnuda. En cuclillas desata en su espalda: el sonido de un paraguas al abrirse: un par de alas. Vuela en busca de mantequilla que libar, distraídamente, en lecherías o la que recién preparan las hadas. Cuando anochece salta veloz la cerca, para beber la leche tibia de vaca, con sus orejas de olivo y su pata de liebre.
mujer / mujer tierra / mujer tierra sangre / ciclo sangre tierra / noche luna llena / luna roja / tierra sangre ciclo / noche astro mujer / vientre manos labios / vientre ojos labios / luna bestia alas / sombra muerte / luna hambre / bestia fuego grito / noche cantos / ojos alas / grito fauces vértigo / cielo astro influjo / tierra madre semilla / tierra madre mujer / tierra tumba vientre / canto palabra muerte / ojos alas lengua / pezuña escoba caldero / mujer animal / mujer vuelo / lechuza / pájaro / sirena / mujer madre embrión / vulva labios senos / manos vientre sexo / corazón palabra estrella / lumbre cielo rabia / mar desierto.
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Verónica González Arredondo (Guanajuato, Mexico) holds a PhD in Arts from the Universidad de Guanajuato and a Master’s in Philosophy from the Universidad de Zacatecas. She has received several prestigious Latin American literary awards, including Mexico’s National Ramón López Velarde Prize in Poetry/Premio Nacional de Poesía “Ramón López Velarde, for her book of poems Ese cuerpo no soy / I Am Not That Body (Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas, 2015) as well as the Dolores Castro Prize in Poetry /Premio Dolores Castro, Poesía, an annual prize awarded to a woman writing exceptional and socially conscious work in Spanish, for her book Verde Fuego de Espíritus/Green Fires of the Spirits (Ayuntamiento de Aguascalientes, 2014). Her third book of poems, Damas Errantes/Wandering Women (2019) as well as Voracidad, grito y belleza animal/Voraciousness, Screams and Animal Beauty (2014), a book of essays, were also published by Universidad Autónoma de Zacatecas. Verónica González Arredondo’s books of verse have previously been translated into, and published in, French and Portuguese. From 2017-2018 she held a FONCA fellowship for younger artists through the Fondo Nacional para la Culturas y las Artes/National Fund for Arts and Culture.
Literary translator and poet Allison A. deFreese leads poetry translation workshops for the Oregon Society of Translators and Interpreters. Her recent translations (books) include María Negroni’s Elegy for Joseph Cornell (Dublin: Dalkey Archive Press, 2020), Soaring to New Heights: The Memoir of a Child Migrant Farmworker Who Became a NASA Astronaut (Renuevo, 2020), and Verónica González Arredondo’s I Am Not That Body (Montreal: Pub House Books, 2020), as well as Verónica's Green Fires of the Spirits (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla's University Press, Mexico, 2022). Her work also appears in Asymptote, Bangalore Review, Gulf Coast, Harvard Review, New England Review, and Permafrost. She is winner of Southeast Review's most recent The Best Short-short Story in the World Contest.