Selection of poetry of Iván Vergara
Iván Vergara
I
The hygiene of abandon has to be cared for,
to know how to make the nails lighter and their hunger for dirt,
to be skilful in the art of escape, to know yourself
master of not compromising your skin with other skin:
feminine, grotesque, or spiritual.
Everything that crawls must get up to the eyes,
it has to be buried lustfully, to be the air
that suffocates the nose and be the nation of the soul,
to be a myth of the frontier
the wasteland starts with the plague.
The hygiene has to be taken care of,
when the braids are cut off, there should not be any left behind,
it could germinate dense ways of heaven,
of brave semaphores of reluctance,
of veins that emulate the veins of this city,
a body that had known how to find itself in the wandering,
in the shoulders of loves that now hate, carrying ghosts
more present than the hunger,
with a rhythm-taste like a shadow, taste of salt of the island,
taste of scale changed in the wind, taste of the void
of change; no clothes, destiny, language.
It has to be taken care of mainly when the whispers call,
and one knows to be firm and not turn back; all the
statues remember other lives,
when we were totally female, crazy
of drowned bellies, of rivers that we crossed
swimming, land that is dryer than the glance
when it doesn´t distinguish any accent. It´s Lavapiés
and the land is Africa and the singing
is the East that goes around the world, and the police
is the centre of the deepest of the stone
this burning hygiene is burning desire
the thirst is my escape
spike
shoot.
II
The sparklers that escape from the forge say to each other -I prefer the integral of the bread, the curly of the hair, the solitude of walking with wheels; escaping the grace of the fool, rolling, the jump few times clumsy, sometimes more.
The sparkles escape from the forge with a rush, none of them stops talking about the fall, they are like a waterfall of words that bores the fire, the metal spins, hits the hammer, the vibration originates from them and they think that before the health abandons them, they will be able to get the offers to buy the last model to protect themselves from the cold, to take the fear off their body of light; then, like all mysteries of life, they disappear.
III
Not knowing the dryness, the touch of the fire, the salty liquid of the high sea on the throat, the splashing of the Sun to not get extinguished during the night.
Running to the swamps without making our voids dirty, our tunnels of silver turned into wheat or tigers, like the absence that awaits after the storm.
Let´s part ways, you said, let´s embrace that which states that it is okay for us to embrace. Let´s be a border.
But not knowing how to annihilate the dozes of summer, the wind and its selfish fan makes voiceless and gives, no battle makes us proud, this inner sea extends up to the void of this room, disturbed by the trembling of the shadows and their luminous greed, like the ashes that fall where nothing waits for it.
IV
The days of the ocean like empty pages, they wait for shells to appear through the door, escaping from the deep.
The days in the ocean are a bad plague, an allied symphony with the antique reflection, an animated cosmos by the humid battle, buried around us, to the pinch of the wound that receives the salt and the glory and the sea the surrounds the islands, like it surrounds any land. A continental hug.
The days in the ocean do not know the land, they don´t know what conscience, could surround it and ferment it.
To make that every crack grows life. Like the moss that grows only by night, or already way too late, when the tear doesn´t get out to the world when the Earth is forced to get widen in the farewells.
Iván Vergara (Mexico 1979) directs PLACA (Platform of Chilango Andalusian Artists) Mexico-Spain-USA, is editor of Ultramarina C&D. He coordinates and maintains twenty-four projects in four countries. He is the director of cultural events where he interacts with other arts. He coordinated fourteen editions of the Recital Internacional Chilango Andaluz (RCA) in Seville, Mexico City and fourteen cities in Mexico and Spain. He regularly contributes to Mexican newspapers and magazines as a correspondent for the Andalusian region. In 2013 he launched his Micro documentary project ‘Contemporaneous’ between NY, London, Mexico and Spain. He has toured fifteen cities in the United States giving lectures, workshops, expanded readings, and concerts. He teaches poetry workshops in collaboration with Vaso Roto. He recently supported and collaborated with the FCE Spain. He is the author of the book Era Hombre Era Mito Era Bestia / Man Myth Beast (2013).
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