By MATILDE CAMPILHO
Translated by HUGO DOS SANTOS
for José
On the night Billy Ray was born
(New York, 28th and 7th)
not one soul contemplated the geraniums
There was, however, the sound of the world falling
like multiple stalactites
in the area surrounding the hospital
The apricot tree in my childhood yard would sieve the night. Pouring through the openwork of the leaves, the moonlight littered the ground with patches shaped like bats. Because we lived in the Sunset District of San Francisco, sea drafts kept ruffling the leaves, so the bats were always fluttering their wings. Sometimes I would lie down and let the light-bats tap all over me. We lived in the bottom flat of a spindly three-story house, and there was a fig tree too, and blackberries on brambles thick as the Lord’s crown of thorns, right in the heart of the city. We had picnics with the queijadas my father made—the coconut tarts that were a specialty of his family’s bakery on the island of Terceira in the Azores. His job while raising me, his only child, was fulfilling dessert orders for restaurants, and he rented a tiny industrial kitchen in Chinatown from three to nine in the morning. Once, a triumph, the Tadich Grill requested his alfenim to decorate their pastry cart—the white sugar confection molded into doves or miniature baskets.
By JOSÉ LUÍS PEIXOTO
Translated by HUGO DOS SANTOS
Alone, I arrive in a looted city
and walk slowly, my arms hanging
loosely, I look through open doors,
By ANANDA LIMA
I close my right eye meu olho direito
and see everything tudo que
my mother my father meus pais no meu país
didn’t
know não sabiam
to do tudo
then que fazer?
e hoje, minha vista cansada
from Pessoa: A Biography
The following chapter from Pessoa: A Biography, forthcoming from Norton/Liveright, tells the story of how Alberto Caeiro, Fernando Pessoa’s first major heteronym, came into existence. The other full-fledged heteronyms, Álvaro de Campos and Ricardo Reis, would emerge three months later. (The heteronyms, Pessoa claimed, were not mere pseudonyms, since they thought and felt and wrote differently from their creator.) Although he had published some critical essays and a passage from The Book of Disquiet, Pessoa was still virtually unknown as a poet. Literature, moreover, was not Pessoa’s only interest. Throughout his adult life, he wrote prolifically about philosophy, religion, psychology, and politics.
The story of Caeiro is preceded by a brief sketch of the political climate in Europe before World War I, especially in Portugal, where, less than four years earlier, a revolution had toppled a much–discredited monarchy, replacing it with a tumultuous republic.
For this publication in The Common, I have excluded most of the notes of the book version (bibliographical information, mainly) while adding other notes to clarify references to people and events mentioned in earlier chapters.
By STEVEN LEYVA
“… and there is promise in such sweat.”
—John Proctor, from The Crucible, by Arthur Miller
Given this ruddy, straightened wig no one could place
my face on a spectral scale of “ethnic.” I slid
on and off stage. I spoke plain. I didn’t name names. Some
audiences mistook me for Muscogee Creek. I spoke
in first person. Under that wig I wore cornrows
in Oklahoma’s emaciated winter.
The wolf belongs to the boy I to the wolf
I ask permission to still be myself this time of night.
Sem barriga, sem fome, sem bebida. Blue notes
from a dead man’s tribute creep up my balcony.
Damn, you know how you know a song,
By BRUCE SNIDER
Over a hundred men suspected of being gay are being abducted, tortured and even killed in the southern Russian republic of Chechnya…
—CNN
Looking out at the blue sky
we listen to news
of men in Chechnya. Touching
counters, our washrags move like ghosts.
You sweep the kitchen. I tend the cry
of the washing machine, the low roof
that is our only roof.
By LEONARDO TONUS
Translated by CAROLYNE WRIGHT
they say that the most impressive of all crossings
is not thirst
or the fear
afterwards.
The humiliation
no longer wounds
what does not exist
they say
bodies in a boat
of bodies
veins
eyes
skin
penis
nails
vagina
By CLARA OBLIGADO
Translated by RACHEL BALLENGER
On December 5, 1976, I arrived in Madrid from Argentina. I flew Iberia airlines, caught the plane in Montevideo because I was afraid of the disappearances happening at the border. I left wearing summer clothes, as if I were a tourist heading for the beaches of Uruguay, then, two or three days later, landed in Madrid, where it was winter. My father and sister saw me off. It took me six years—the years of the dictatorship—to return.
Don’t miss an issue! Subscribe to The Common.