I’m Going 

for the nun Marie Eugenie Pierre
(Haiti 1950—Dominican Republic 2012)

I want to reshape myself
with the same pieces God used to shape Earth.
The wing opens and closes the door
like the idiot dead that come and go without touching.

Cut off my head
without anesthesia
and insert a steering wheel;
break off my limbs,
and glue on wheels;
carve out my heart
and install a motor,
let my blood spurt out
and inject gasoline.
Pass the key!
I’m going.
Hey, come back here!
You forgot to give me brakes.

 

Love in Dust

x
Kiss me
warmly.
Yes, under the striking sun.
(The strike will end but my lips still press against the dust).
Sit by my side.
Thank you
(but dust dirties my thighs).
Lay on my body’s bed.
With pleasure.
I see myself in the mirror of dust.
(Your arrows hunting my heart).
Gnawing my bones to the marrow.

 

—translated from the Spanish by Ariel Francisco

 

∞

 

Marckenson Jean-Baptiste (1985) is a poet, translator and engineer born in Haiti near the Dominican border. He is the author of several books, including Sobresaturado (Oversaturated). He now lives in Chile.

Ariel Francisco is the author of four poetry collections, most recently All the Places We Love Have Been Left in Ruins (Burrow Press, 2024), and the translator of various poetry collections from Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, and Haiti. Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, POETRY, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University.