Rocío Cerón: 13 Ways To Inhabit a Corner

translated from Spanish by Anna Rosen Guercio

 

Please note. a list of postings after january 12, 2012 can be found here

 

I

Ostriches in flight —there are women whose words are ash trees. Shadows stitch together harbors of air. In the midst of the stampede, a hand rests on the arc of a kneecap. Cigar and smoke. Rosy cypress sleep. The scent reaches far beyond the border. From the bureau —power, smile destroyed/ ocher temptation, strophic enjambed body. Vestibule.

 

II

See where the castaways sing. From the southern corner of the eye —water of memory— the leaden tone of cold. One could be dusky cognizance, furious advance party of the human hounds, but the vortex holds back rebellion. Even the sweater drips. And between the winter of onethousandninehundredseventytwo and the predictions for twothousandtwelveendofthetheworld one day and the next. Grammar of Babylonia. Descent.

 

III

Candy and one ant. Brief asthma attack. Legs run silky over a little finger. This landscape is not political: hollow, center of bullet or poem. Two walls make a wasteland in between. Mint, the candy is mint-flavored. Footprint.

 

 

IV

On both sides of the road —unstable eyelids, 2mg of lozam— the surface of things: steel piping, mosaics (opus tessellatum), synthetic fabric in an abstract style. Pained language. Chromatic monopoly. All nude body kills theory. Rotate space. Sky. 

 

 

V

A point a particular point a point a point evading its own point a point that reveals another point the point that annihilates its shadow a point the point right on point: limit.

 

VI

Rain on penumbra. Fur and gaunt. Daydream and notes in outbreak of murmurs. Sustaining wound. At the stroke of a swift sound —sky open over body, tongue— particles of prussian blue. Slippage at the edge of the mouth.  Plexus.

 

VII

Flying into the eye, black petrel. Walking along a clearly delimited cliff. Hills, clouds, boreal forest. Woman undressing on a frozen bed. Beneath the folds of her clothing a constellation of sleet. Hamstrings burn. Barbera or Bonarda, a strong taste in the mouth. Edge.

 

VIII

In the sessile body of a leaf, scarcely attached, the stratum of the world shines.  An audible flow. Inflections sustained by insinuation —an amazonian canopy in the middle of the room. Ants always infer the state of things. The intensity of one figure inside another, the lightbulb’s whine, the tone deaf whistling. The beer falls to the floor. Tokonoma.

 

IX

Ash wood chest, natural and geometric motifs in perfect symmetry. Adjustable legs for lifting it off the floor, lock and key, handles on the sides for easy transport. Period: Eighteenth century. No one will forget the color of the bracelet. The large-scale economy destroys will. A man announces his disappearance. Trill.

 

X

Bony angles, shapes and slope from which the ritual stems. Who fears the air.  Fissure where it is. Polished door. Still lifes, tobacco smoke. Crossing. A poem is a metal file a leap day a March 31st a mindset a pine forest. Air, saturated lungs. Oxygen to supply the body. Furs pulled close against the wind. Cage.

 

XI

A point, black umbrella, pen with blue ink, directions not to think about death, a dry blood stain, cadmium scrawl on cotton, arc with systematically repeating motifs —mountain carnation or marsh marigold. All the potential of looking: festering wound man’s nuptial back arousing thickness of lower lip rope of ash wood drifts back and forth mother of pearl fire opal daylight on the scene movement and traces.

XII

Jubilation and adoration in parentheses. Above the long hair of that woman, seen in Baden-Baden, a galaxy hangs. No satellite rings. No saintly crown.  Aftershock. Pealing bells (no ecclesiastical province) whisper a half-truth. White and cracked. The lips. We need a new password to get back to the world in time. While the word appears, she draws a spiral in the water. Resplendence.

 

XIII

Cars circulate in an inch and a half. Split space. A dog barks in the distance. Tinsel. Blueberry muffin and chocolate chips. Synthetic happiness pill. It wasn’t just the swinging of cumbia salsa samba. Hinge between realities, "look at your iridescent body, iridescent bluegreenpurple.” Language. Territory for the emergence of parks cityscapes rehabilitated hillsides of houses with metal roofs nucleic stones sacrificial spaces. Boxes and wrapping, vital space inch and a half. Nation.
 

[note. Born in Mexico City in 1972, Rocío Cerón is a multi-faceted poet & performance/video artist whose work cuts easily across several genres.  Of the larger work, Diorama, from which the preceding sequence was excerpted, she writes: “Questioning. Above all else. Understanding the world's simulations. Its woven texture. A diorama is a fragment, a vision that condense, cuts, segments, halts. This book emerges from the collector's path. Travel poem. Poem interchangeable where powers are interconnected: verses that do not die, but are transformed. Diorama is also sound, knot and jumble, convergence of syllables. Diorama is breath. Air unfolding itself over the landscape, scenery, linguistic taxidermy. This. Poetics inscribed on the border of recounting and delirium. Collection and phrasing. Driven by desire. Questioning in its purest form.” A bilingual edition of Diorama is being published later this year by Brutas Editoras, Chile, in conjunction with McNally Jackson in New York.]