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Articles by Mariana Spada
Reunion - Words Without Borders
Chaotic, crowded, noisy. I looked down from my perch on the 300-meter-high tie beams. Beijing West Railway Station was buzzing. Throngs of passengers like so many wriggling Cambrian organisms, a rhythmic rumble barreling up from the places they seemed to crawl. My ears couldn’t make out a thing, but each utterance was captured by sensors, sent to the Control Center and spelled out by the vocal recognition machines, all before being slipped into the surveillance files. This was the big rush.
The Law of Conservation
By Mariana Spada Translated by Robin Myers Featuring a preface by Esther Allen The Law of Conservation is a poetry collection intensely attuned to landscape, both geographic and metaphorical.
“Estival, ida y vuelta”/ “Summer, There and Back,” a Poem by Mariana Spada, translated by Robin Myers
Nada hay como remar de noche por un río negro y conocido tan negro que la luna reverbera sobre el perfil tornasolado de los peces cruzando el caudal antiguo mil cuchillos arrojados desde el fondo por una mano ciega. En este río domado por represas las ramas se vuelcan mansas lejos de la orilla, y besan el agua donde abrevan las luciérnagas que una vez pareció que nos seguían. Este río lo cruzamos juntos una noche, desde una costa de arena hasta la otra de espinas.
When Did You Know
Mariana Spada’s poetry collection The Law of Conservation is out this month from Deep Vellum in Robin Myers’s translation. In this poem, Spada echoes the questions and comments she receives about her trans identity from the people around her. When did you know what you were? What did you feel the first time you glanced at yourself in the mirror and knew? Have you always known?
Trans Perspectives
[When I was born my mother] By Giovanna Cristina Vivinetto I practiced the art of clairvoyance, / became a sorceress, a witch, a woman Translated from Italian by Danielle Pieratti
Umbilical by Julia Cimafiejeva
My hair was always cut short so nobody knew that you left me your thick heavy braids I was taught to address you with a plural “You” as if there was more than one person in your body otherwise, how could you have endured your frightening life alone frightened, you hid in the swamp of ice under the weight of wet braids my name is a mirror of your name green seeds of my eyes grew out of yours but I sold your inheritance for a dry crumb of freedom I cut long and thick umbilical hair I thought I...
A Friendly Face by Sevgi Soysal - Words Without Borders
Adana has three things in its favor: its sunny climate, its growing workforce, and its fertile soil. No hope, though, of seeing the sun set over the Çukurova Valley from Oya’s hotel window. From here, the city was one enormous construction site, each new building uglier than the last. Day after day, she watched them slowly rising. Night after night, she kept herself safe behind tightly closed curtains. Trying not to feel sorry for herself.
The Impatient - Words Without Borders
I am different. I always was. To my mother, I seemed like an alien. While my sisters swooned over colorful pagnes that our father’s employee brought each year for the celebration at the end of Ramadan, fighting to claim the color that best suited, I would arrive well behind everyone else, take the pagne that no one else wanted, and leave, bored, to plunge back into my books.
Where Dogs Bark with Their Tails
Papa and Maman would leave early in the morning to take care of the animals and open the store that you could see as you entered the village of Morne-Galant. Your aunt Lucinde and I would eat in silence, a bit of fraxinella mixed with hot water. When Maman went into town, Lucinde and I would go to school. It was five kilometers on foot to the middle of the town.
Post-Op
from the June 2020 issue Poetry by Mariana Spada Translated from Spanish by Robin Myers After returning home from gender-affirmation surgery, a patient navigates a new existence where the physical and emotional are laid bare in this poem by Mariana Spada. After ten days in the hospital the apartment is a desolate labyrinth a power outage as you shower in the dark gingerly probing at the new parts of your body the gaping wound and novel brush of flesh-folds in the open air.
The Art and Horror of the Argentine Asado
The Argentine national food is the asado. I won’t go on about its mystery and metaphors, because that tends to be mere decoration, sometimes exaggerated, other times just rubbernecking. Really, it’s a simple custom. You cook meat on a parrilla (grill), or on a disc, or even stuck onto metal spears if the asado is out in the open. In Argentina, we eat the whole cow. Its intestines, which we call chinchulines.
First Read—From “The Tongue of Adam” by Abdelfattah Kilito - Words Without Borders
How, from Babel onward, can we explain the plurality of language? In The Tongue of Adam, translated from the French by Robyn Creswell and forthcoming from New Directions, Moroccan writer Abdelfattah Kilito explores this and other enigmatic questions related to translation, comparative religion, and lexicography. Babels The question of an original language arises when multiple languages are found in a state of competition or rivalry.
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