Liliana Ponce
Day 2
The signs multiply the moments. The sign and its repetition form a current of confidence, of liberation. In that current I should learn to drown my anxiety. I imagine a new space in the mind, born from this material point, tough and rocky. It’s an inorganic, undefined point, like the beginning of a possibility. The beginning of possibility is not even the beginning.
Tonight, sound will be replaced by the eye. Breath will be replaced by the eye.
Day 4
My obsession isn’t the stroke, but the stroke enacted, which begins with the dawn, with an insomnia schooled in the light of yesterday’s images, of a different afternoon.
I exile myself in webs of dust, I drown myself (but hide in the indifference).
No: I multiply my body, I multiply my mind, and where there was limb and hand, and where there was thirst, I abandon the idea of person.
Day 5
In silence, I sketch fragments of signs, strokes, like exercises.
Through repetition, I began to forget my hand. But even the path will be outside before long.
The curve shelters ways of shrouding the white.
Day 6
Behavior unsteady; perhaps as a defense, my brush frees itself in answers to the moon.
I chase an impossible room, to concede the spoken to another ear, another rule.
Day 8
Night of storms. Not in the sky or the air, but a storm that travels in roots, from breath to breath in the living, painting doors.
It’s the spell of this unsteady hour beneath the flow of a symbolic blood.
I should invent another hand. As in a dance, to make the movements of known choreography, to put yourself on the bridge with a view of the action.
Absent it was in the ascent—my hearing let itself sing.
Never will I free myself from these moorings.
The mouth seals itself in water, the unwanted shout silenced in bits of words. And yet nothing moves.
The storm splits the dusk from September, converting it into moments of anxiety, of delay, of empty traces—that you already knew how the curve opens into silence, how the watery blackness makes willow branches and the powerful blackness cracks in rocks and clouds.
Toward the west, metallic trees stayed motionless—they were moving through alleys, brushing the air. Beneath the skin, the lunar light entered. It entered and was the beginning—not wanting to remember and shielding in the blackness this insipid and painful cloth.
Day 11
Monotony. From one piece, to search for another piece. From him, another. To progress, dividing space and time, the eye distancing itself until blankness occupies the hand.
In front of the paper, the body inclined, the arm extended. But my mind is too tied to the wood.
The river, steady line, creates a moving horizon.
Day 12
From the direction of the force you can infer a virtue. To resist, in the other direction, allows you to discover imitation, parody. But for now you can only remain in the center, considering the nebula of habit.
I don’t know how to crouch like an animal, or like a flower, to gradually close my organic leaves.
The words supported in my throat—arid, lost—are thinning. The dodged glance hurries not to model air, evaporates.
I write each line without a guide. I write slowly, like a debtor.
Day 14
Spirits change your hand. Your voice is emotional, excessive. The story reasons in memory. It doesn’t deny the thirst, the brief, the bravery of the sea, the profile of the trees, the shadow of the rock.
Spirits change the eyes. They threaten to bind another body to the skull.
Your voice has created threads that grow in the pupils.
I write. I write signs. I write death. I write another. I write so I don’t have to speak, so I don’t have to watch.
The signs multiply the moments. The sign and its repetition form a current of confidence, of liberation. In that current I should learn to drown my anxiety. I imagine a new space in the mind, born from this material point, tough and rocky. It’s an inorganic, undefined point, like the beginning of a possibility. The beginning of possibility is not even the beginning.
Tonight, sound will be replaced by the eye. Breath will be replaced by the eye.
Day 4
My obsession isn’t the stroke, but the stroke enacted, which begins with the dawn, with an insomnia schooled in the light of yesterday’s images, of a different afternoon.
I exile myself in webs of dust, I drown myself (but hide in the indifference).
No: I multiply my body, I multiply my mind, and where there was limb and hand, and where there was thirst, I abandon the idea of person.
Day 5
In silence, I sketch fragments of signs, strokes, like exercises.
Through repetition, I began to forget my hand. But even the path will be outside before long.
The curve shelters ways of shrouding the white.
Day 6
Behavior unsteady; perhaps as a defense, my brush frees itself in answers to the moon.
I chase an impossible room, to concede the spoken to another ear, another rule.
Day 8
Night of storms. Not in the sky or the air, but a storm that travels in roots, from breath to breath in the living, painting doors.
It’s the spell of this unsteady hour beneath the flow of a symbolic blood.
I should invent another hand. As in a dance, to make the movements of known choreography, to put yourself on the bridge with a view of the action.
Absent it was in the ascent—my hearing let itself sing.
Never will I free myself from these moorings.
The mouth seals itself in water, the unwanted shout silenced in bits of words. And yet nothing moves.
The storm splits the dusk from September, converting it into moments of anxiety, of delay, of empty traces—that you already knew how the curve opens into silence, how the watery blackness makes willow branches and the powerful blackness cracks in rocks and clouds.
Toward the west, metallic trees stayed motionless—they were moving through alleys, brushing the air. Beneath the skin, the lunar light entered. It entered and was the beginning—not wanting to remember and shielding in the blackness this insipid and painful cloth.
Day 11
Monotony. From one piece, to search for another piece. From him, another. To progress, dividing space and time, the eye distancing itself until blankness occupies the hand.
In front of the paper, the body inclined, the arm extended. But my mind is too tied to the wood.
The river, steady line, creates a moving horizon.
Day 12
From the direction of the force you can infer a virtue. To resist, in the other direction, allows you to discover imitation, parody. But for now you can only remain in the center, considering the nebula of habit.
I don’t know how to crouch like an animal, or like a flower, to gradually close my organic leaves.
The words supported in my throat—arid, lost—are thinning. The dodged glance hurries not to model air, evaporates.
I write each line without a guide. I write slowly, like a debtor.
Day 14
Spirits change your hand. Your voice is emotional, excessive. The story reasons in memory. It doesn’t deny the thirst, the brief, the bravery of the sea, the profile of the trees, the shadow of the rock.
Spirits change the eyes. They threaten to bind another body to the skull.
Your voice has created threads that grow in the pupils.
I write. I write signs. I write death. I write another. I write so I don’t have to speak, so I don’t have to watch.
translated from the Spanish by Michael Martin Shea
