Translated by VALZHYNA MORT
Old Lady Gippius
of a tumorous Adam’s apple
from a damned balcony
watches
an officer fool with a puppy.
Text by FRANCISCO FONT-ACEVEDO
Images by RAFAEL TRELLES
Santurce, originalmente llamado Cangrejos, fue municipio desde el siglo XVIII, aunque luego fuera anexado como barrio de San Juan. Fue también el primer pueblo fundado por negros en Puerto Rico en 1773, cien años antes de la abolición de la esclavitud en el país. A partir de la construcción del trolley (primero a vapor en el último cuarto del siglo XIX, luego eléctrico a partir del 1901), se cambió el nombre de San Mateo de Cangrejos al de Santurce, en homenaje a Pablo Ubarri, Conde de Santurzi, encargado de la instalación del tren. Durante el siglo XX, en especial durante la modernización del país a partir de los años 40, Santurce se convirtió en el centro económico y cultural del país. Llegó a tener una población de 195,000 personas en 1950. Luego del proceso de suburbanización del país y la construcción de los centros comerciales a partir de finales de los años 60, la importancia de Santurce decayó notablemente. En la actualidad su población ronda los 82,000. Aun así, sigue siendo el barrio más poblado del país.
Los textos que siguen están narrados por Santurce/Cangrejos mismo. Las imágenes son de los murales tal como se reprodujeron e instalaron por todo el barrio. En todos los murales hay una imagen, un texto, el título del libro, un mapa y unas instrucciones para el peatón.
Para más información puedes ver nuestra página web: www.santurceunlibromural.com.
Although it was later annexed as a neighborhood of San Juan, Santurce—originally called Cangrejos—has been a municipality since the eighteenth century. It was also the first town founded by blacks in Puerto Rico, in 1773, one hundred years before the abolition of slavery in the country. Since the construction of the trolley (first the steam model in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, then the electric one in 1901), San Mateo de Cangrejos was renamed Santurce in homage to Pablo Ubarri, Count of Santurtzi, responsible for building the commuter railroad system. Throughout the twentieth century, particularly during the modernization of the country which began in the 1940s, Santurce became the island’s economic and cultural center, with a population of 195,000 people in 1950. After the suburbanization of the country and the construction of malls at the end of the 1960s, Santurce’s importance declined significantly. Its population now stands at approximately 82,000. Even so, it remains Puerto Rico’s most populous district.
The texts that follow are narrated by Santurce/Cangrejos itself. The images are of the murals just as they were reproduced and installed throughout the neighborhood. Each mural includes an image, a text, the title of the book, a map, and instructions for pedestrians.
For more information, visit our website: www.santurceunlibromural.com.
By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
This island is full of women
who come back the way
skeletons return with the surge
or turtles to their native shore.
By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
Dozens of cars
wait in line
for a little fuel.
At the gas station
they’re waiting for a ladder
that leads to a generator.
By MARA PASTOR
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
She asked me for an ice cream machine.
When she said it her collarbones were pronounced.
They were beginning to wilt,
but her skin was the flesh of coconut itself.
Translated by MARÍA JOSÉ GIMÉNEZ
June 10, 2018
New York City
This year, the Puerto Rican flag wore black. Only the white star remained. Seeing it dressed in mourning, it was impossible not to feel a knot from your chest to your gut.
Excerpt from the novel by W. F. HERMANS
Translated from the Dutch by DAVID COLMER
I went out the back door, across the marble terrace and down into the garden, as I had done so many times before. I looked up at the two windows I had calculated as belonging to the locked room. There was nothing to see. As always, they were covered with blackout paper. Nothing had changed. Walking back and forth, I studied all of the protrusions on the back wall: window frames, downpipes. I couldn’t see any way of climbing up without a ladder. It wasn’t even possible to reach them from the window of another room.
Translated by CATHERINE COBHAM
The sea had depressed Huda ever since she was a schoolgirl, bent eagerly over a drawing of a Phoenician princess walking with her prince beside the sea, while their dog played with a shell. The creature that lived in the shell had dyed the dog’s mouth a purple color that clashed with the blue sea. She had written below the picture, ‘The color purple was discovered in the city of Tyre. Tyre is a Phoenician city situated on the Mediterranean Sea, like Beirut.’ Then she took her crayons and gave the prince and princess the most beautiful clothes, and colored the world around them like rainbows mingling with the blue of the sea, but instead of being happy that she had finished her homework, she felt a pain, different from when she had a toothache or grazed her knee: it began in her throat and descended into her belly, because the world and the colors she had drawn on the sheet of paper were what she longed for, unlike her house, empty of color and pictures and music. The pain attacked her throat and she felt as if she was suffocating because she would never walk by the sea like this prince and princess and their dog, never set eyes on its blueness or the lovely colors of the prince and princess’s clothes except in her dreams, and only then if she dreamt in color and not in black and white as usual.
By BESIK KHARANAULI
Translated from the Georgian by ILAN STAVANS with GVANTSA JOBAVA
“We should dig out potatoes tomorrow!”
you told me,
pulling the chair close to the bed
where you were planning to place your clothes
after switching off the light.
Translated by ALICE GUTHRIE
Regardless of how it turned out, the situation certainly demanded a courageous decision. I could no longer bear the chaos that had spread to all areas of my life—a life that I was constantly striving to keep in the best possible state of order.
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