ANNABELL MANJARRÉS FREYLE

ANNABELL MANJARRÉS FREYLE

PIECES OF MEN

men

pieces of men under foliage

men transformed into pain

pain of terrible weeping

tears boiled in agonized prayer

pieces of men cut into fourths

the fifth part is still crying underneath the house

the house is not human

the fifth part screamed louder than the chainsaw

a device invented by men

men with their extremities still stuck

to their trunks like trees

trees were the first to encounter it

they also fell screaming

their leaves screamed

their birds screamed.

The men in pieces have screamed

and the darkest part remained in their mothers’ navels

the most visceral in their wives’ temples

the most viscous part in their children’s drool

the most eloquent carries messages of fright

the shattered part

belongs to their friends.

Pieces of men packed together

in no one’s laws

the blood of no one is transfigured

in the thicket at the pier

they sleep in black bags

their pieces among the rocks

I have not seen them

they’ve told me

this country has told me

on this sand

the same wet, dry, uneven sand

spread out among animals

even to common hells.

This country is a common grave

they plant pieces of men

germinating incomplete men and women

their guardian angels have failed

dark entities triumphed over faith

Today, those who bury them

are a procession of jigsaw puzzles.

Beasts were born in that house

the house was built with pieces of fallen trees

in the sea

a hand searches for any face

to close its eyes

and the stilt shantytown is ashamed.

They’ve told me

I have not seen it

this country tells me

before sleeping

the national hell

a symbol ripped into useless flags

flags divided into two men

men screaming Yes

men answering No.

A bird of prey flies over

men in pieces

the bird perches on the national crest

no one has told me

I’ve seen it on top of the palaces

and since then

my happiness is wary.

AMPHIBIAN SOLITUDE

A morning can shed

the shells that it breathed yesterday and regret them under the sheets.

A machine of flesh stands up without the ghost of pride,

surrendering to sleep a few minutes more

under the sheets, under the rug, under an unknown guilt.

On the bedside table,

a teacup without tea or coffee opens its arms to you and says:

“Push the rock to the highest point, little Sisyphus”.

You know it would do no one any good to see a rock at the peak

but the gods compel you.

Overwriting your name, enclosing it in a circle

will not return it to the one who sighed yesterday.

Your name is your dress;

your surname, your jacket:

Annabell Naked Manjarrés Freyle.

And, of course, your shoes are not your destiny,

but they can walk it.

You’ve watched time go to sleep,

oh yes, you have:

the body veering towards a corner,

in the attempt to reconstruct the speeches yesterday sighed.

And who sighs today begs all of the longing for return to go back to sleep

and lull the infantile desire

projected on cozy sheets

and portable illusions.

It would be easier to accommodate desire to what comes or annihilate it

so that the days of water or earth are excellent.

In any case, making the bed

would be like dressing the name

of the one who receives your body alone.

I NO LONGER READ TAROT

The midday mirage

showed me

the drowned dancer

was only humidity.

And in the afternoon’s stupor I could see

the faces of those who

disguised as God and conjugated me.

I expressed my ignorance to them

as the only truth

and I became

a shoddy believer.

I ruined all predictions

burning the cards

from shuffling them at random so much.

I took a fistful of sand…

threw it at the sea.

And the sand was my fate

and the sea was nothingness.

There is no reason for a creature of crystal

to see beyond night.

There’s no point.

The swords that hacked me to pieces

lie on the ground with my primitive blood.

A distant woman

is the blood that circulates within me with her metallic perfume,

with her oxygen from the spring

who did not know how to name things.

I no longer read Tarot, it’s true,

because it made

fate out of everything I wanted

alongside the sum

of loose words which

I uttered irresponsibly.

The reflections that drained me

were arriving from afar

approaching me in the moment,

and regardless,

from that moment’s truth

I received nothing

but

existence.

ANNABELL  MANJARRÉS FREYLE

ANNABELL MANJARRÉS FREYLE (Colombia, Gaira. 1985): Communications specialist and journalist. Poet and storyteller. The Office of the Governor of Magdalena awarded her first place in poetry and second place for short story in the Poetry and Young Person’s Short Story Contest in 2013. She is the Bueno y Breve National Short Story Winner of El Túnel magazine from Montería in 2015, which she won with the story El hombre en su jaula [The Man in His Cage]. Author of three unpublished volumes of poetry: El Espejo Lunar Blanco [The White Moon Mirror], Óleo de una mujer acosada por el tiempo [Painting of a Woman harassed by Time], and Animales invertebrados [Invertebrate Animals]. Her poems have been translated into English, Catalan, French, and Italian, and appear in various national and international anthologies. She has written an unpublished collection of short stories and is currently working on her first novel. The next selection has been traslated by Ana María Correa: