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Poetry

Obscenity

by Paloma Chen

translated by Lawrence Schimel

A photograph of a firework erupting at dusk. The darkening sky is just visible in the gap between two buildings.

I’m terrified of my migrant parents,
always with their eyes set on flight.

Is that how you solve everything, Papá?
Are you going to once more do what he tells you, Mamá?

I’m more terrified by the wound of birth,
I hide it in the oriental part of the HERE.
What was so bad so as to abandon the THERE
where one finds oneself at just twenty?
How did they do it to reconstruct (themselves),
to recompose (themselves),
to resist?

How to raise an offspring who curses a place that
she has never visited,
who dreams in a language she doesn’t know,
who lives in another one which will always be foreign to her?

What is so good to justify staying?
What European dream is being
the Chinese woman who sells beer,
the Chinese man of the village,
the Chinese girl of El Hormiguero,
the Chinese kid of Física o Química,
the China girl of China boy?

That is not my dream.

My dream is to be the blood that flows from the migratory wound,
the Valencian queen of the gunpowder blessed by my ancestors.

My dream is that they don’t separate me from my father
and from my mother
into one line for foreigners
and another for Europeans,
that we embark
through the same gate,
that we fly together
to wherever
passports are
an obscenity.

Translation from the Spanish

Editorial note: From Invocación a las mayorías silenciosas (Invocation to the silent majorities) (Letraversal, 2022).

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More by Paloma Chen

More Poetry

May 2023

The May 2023 issue of World Literature Today ponders “The Future of the Book,” featuring a marquee interview with Azar Nafisi and contributions by others on the subject of books and book culture. The book review section rounds up the best new books from around the world, and additional interviews, poetry, short fiction and creative nonfiction, culture essays, a postcard from the former Yugoslavia, and an outpost from Berlin make the May issue your perfect summer reading companion.