Sólo para decirte (William Carlos Williams)

Sólo para decirte
que me comí
las ciruelas
que estaban en
la heladera

y que
probablemente
guardabas
para el desayuno

Perdóname
estaban deliciosas
tan dulces
tan frías

Sensemayá, Nicolás Guillén (ritual para matar una culebra)

ELVIRA HERNÁNDEZ / LA BANDERA DE CHILE

A la Bandera de Chile la tiran por la ventana

la ponen para lágrimas en televisión

clavada en la parte más alta de un Empire Chilean

en el mástil centro del Estadio Nacional

pasa un orfeón pasa un escalón

dos tres cuatro

La Bandera de Chile sale a la cancha

en una cancha de fútbol se levanta la Bandera de Chile

la rodea un cordón policial como a un estadio olímpico

(todo es estrictamente deportivo)

La Bandera de Chile vuela por los aires

echada a su suerte.

CUANDO TODOS SE VAYAN, Jorge Teillier

Cuando todos se vayan a otros planetas
yo quedaré en la ciudad abandonada
bebiendo un último vaso de cerveza,
y luego volveré al pueblo donde siempre regreso
como el borracho a la taberna
y el niño a cabalgar
en el balancín roto.
Y en el pueblo no tendré nada que hacer,
sino echarme luciérnagas a los bolsillos
o caminar a orillas de rieles oxidados
o sentarme en el roído mostrador de un almacén
para hablar con antiguos compañeros de escuela.
Como una araña que recorre
los mismos hilos de su red
caminaré sin prisa por las calles
invadidas de malezas
mirando los palomares
que se vienen abajo,
hasta llegar a mi casa
donde me encerraré a escuchar
discos de un cantante de 1930
sin cuidarme jamás de mirar
los caminos infinitos
trazados por los cohetes en el espacio.

El día que aprendí a rezar, Tatiana de la Tierra

Hoy viernes santo
se puede bañar
pero no estregar
se puede comer
pero no cocinar
se puede ver televisión
pero no bailar
se puede leer
pero no cantar
se puede salir
¡a la iglesia no mas!

hoy viernes santo
armo un rosario con los pecados
que no he cometido
y rezo las madres nuestras
que nunca  aprendí

madre nuestra, diosita en los cielos
bendito sea tu nombre
te ruego que calmes
a tu hija lesbiana pagana
placentera y casi puta

hoy viernes santo
lo que pasa, madre nuestra
es que no creo que la muerte
del hijo de no sé quién
hace no sé cuánto
debería afectarme en mi casa
en mi día libre con mi amante
sinceramente, madre nuestra
puedo aceptar lo de no barrer
y hasta lo de no cortar
pero por favor, ¡ten piedad!

hoy viernes santo
me quería entregar
en actividades intimas
pero mire madre nuestra
es que mi amante es cristiana
y toma este día muy al pelo
me deja a mi, su hija tan buena
conociendo penitencias que no merezco
 estrenando rosarios y oraciones que no se
entonces me toca inventarlos
en mi luto lesbiano
de hoy
viernes santo.

"Eat, Pray, Love", Elizabeth Gilbert

Of course, I’ve had a lot of time to formulate my opinions about divinity since that night on the bathroom floor when I spoke to God directly for the first time. In the middle of that dark November crisis, though, I was not interested in formulating my views on theology. I was interested only in saving my life. I had finally noticed that I seemed to have reached a state of hopeless and life-threatening despair, and it occurred to me that sometimes people in this state will approach God for help. I think I’d read that in a book somewhere. What I said to God through my gasping sobs was something like this: “Hello, God. How are you? I’m Liz. It’s nice to meet you.” That’s right—I was speaking to the creator of the universe as though we’d just been introduced at a cocktail party. But we work with what we know in this life, and these are the words I always use at the beginning of a relationship. In fact, it was all I could do to stop myself from saying, “I’ve always been a big fan of your work . . .” “I’m sorry to bother you so late at night,” I continued. “But I’m in serious trouble. And I’m sorry I haven’t ever spoken directly to you before, but I do hope I have always expressed ample gratitude for all the blessings that you’ve given me in my life.” This thought caused me to sob even harder. God waited me out. I pulled myself together enough to go on: “I am not an expert at praying, as you know. But can you please help me? I am in desperate need of help. I don’t know what to do. I need an answer. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do. Please tell me what to do . . .” And so the prayer narrowed itself down to that simple entreaty—Please tell me what to do—repeated again and again. I don’t know how many times I begged. I only know that I begged like someone who was pleading for her life. And the crying went on forever. Until—quite abruptly—it stopped. Quite abruptly, I found that I was not crying anymore. I’d stopped crying, in fact, in midsob. My misery had been completely vacuumed out of me. I lifted my forehead off the floor and sat up in surprise, wondering if I would see now some Great Being who had taken my weeping away. But nobody was there. I was just alone. But not really alone, either. I was surrounded by something I can only describe as a little pocket of silence—a silence so rare that I didn’t want to exhale, for fear of scaring it off. I was seamlessly still. I don’t know when I’d ever felt such stillness. Then I heard a voice. Please don’t be alarmed—it was not an Old Testament Hollywood Charlton Heston voice, nor was it a voice telling me I must build a baseball field in my backyard. It was merely my own voice, speaking from within my own self. But this was my voice as I had never heard it before. This was my voice, but perfectly wise, calm and compassionate. This was what my voice would sound like if I’d only ever experienced love and certainty in my life. How can I describe the warmth of affection in that voice, as it gave me the answer that would forever seal my faith in the divine? The voice said: Go back to bed, Liz. I exhaled. It was so immediately clear that this was the only thing to do.

I Remember Nothing, Nora Ephron

I have been forgetting things for years—at least since I was in my thirties. I know this because I wrote something about it at the time. I have proof. Of course, I can't remember exactly where I wrote about it, or when, but I could probably hunt it up if I had to.

In my early days of forgetting things, words would slip away, and names. I did what you normally do when this happens: I scrolled through a mental dictionary, trying to figure out what letter the word began with, and how many syllables were involved. Eventually the lost thing would float back into my head, recaptured. I never took such lapses as harbingers of doom, or old age, or actual senescence. I always knew that whatever I'd forgotten was eventually going to come back to me sooner or later. Once I went to a store to buy a book about Alzheimer's disease and forgot the name of it. I thought it was funny. And it was, at the time.