Don’t Be Scared, It’s Nothing, It’s Just America

Jorgenrique Adoum (Ecuador)
translated by Katherine M. Hedeen & Víctor Rodríguez Núñez

When I found out
(because I’m like that, someone who gets up
kicking and screaming, disinterring, puts on the body
left on the chair, the hope that didn’t
fit anymore like a bad set of false teeth, and leaves,
actually gets taken out, to see how go
the outthere days, how the insolent dictator
statue is, helmet up and helmet
down, carddeck animal, turning bad
bitch on his own account, bad communion host in the smitten
summer, bad stone in his dew, his memory,
just so the exile trips, scarcely
falling, barely, sees he’s mistaken,
that he’s wrong in his roots)
I woke up
afraid.
Where am I, I cried out, after
so much effort, how much longer
is it still before, what’s my name
then, why do I have a name.
(Because everything
smelled like always, old suffering, worthless
yesterday death, absurd
where remains linger of the cobwebbed
dinner, and still, still you’ve got to set
the table, waiters, lazy, customary
prophets, to put some backbone into the bread,
serve the poor’s breakfast, without so much
returning to today, mistaken date, I mean,
and so many centuries of not washing the napkin.)

And I couldn’t keep unlearning from utter
story and I couldn’t tighten the heartbelt
so it might hold on. It’s better we left,
my neighbor and me, to remake what’s broken, clothes,
to make ready the verges.
I still haven’t gone back
and I don’t know when I’ll die again: I haven’t got the time.