Having eyes, I could not resist climbing to the highest
branch and plucking the last of September’s apples. Put it
in the fruit basket and, at ten in the morning, place the basket
on the garden table. You bring the coffee and the croissant
and I’ll pull out the silverware to cut up the fruit. I’m the
flesh that you refuse by falling asleep on the tablecloth as I
ready the camera. Desire is always a verb: to take the
photograph of your hair spread out on the table beneath the
shade of these branches; to deny me your eyes. This is how
it falls to me to liken you to yourself, to balance the knives
over the blueberries at a perfect angle, to not cut through you
like foam. My desire is this fruit that remains intact, the blind
spot of this shot: that’s me when you take me away.
Marta del Pozo has a PhD in Spanish literature from the University of Massachusetts- Amherst and a MFA in creative writing from New York University. She has published Escuela de geómetras (Devenir, Madrid, 2015) and has been awarded the International Poetry Prize Antonio Gala for Hambre de imágenes/ Hunger of Images (Alhulia, Granada, 2016). She has translated into Spanish the American poets Richard Jackson, Robert Bringhurst (both published in Kriller71, Barcelona) and Leonard Schwartz (forthcoming with Varasek ediciones, Madrid). With Nicholas Rattner she has translated into English Viento de Fuego / Fire Wind by Yván Yauri (Ugly Duckling Presse, NY, 2011). She is an Assistant Professor in Spanish at the University of Massachusetts- Dartmouth and editorial director at Quantum Prose.
