"Tomboy" by Claudia Masin, translated by Robin Myers

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend September 28, 2019   Tomboy   Claudia Masin

Translated by Robin Myers Read and listen to the poem in its original Spanish.   I don't understand how we walk around the world as if there were a single way for each of us, a kind of life stamped into us like a childhood injection, a cure painstakingly released into the blood with every passing year like a poison transmuted into antidote against any possible disobedience that might awaken in the body. But the body isn't mere submissive matter, a mouth that cleanly swallows whatever it's fed. It's a lattice of little filaments, as I imagine threads of starlight must be. What can never be touched: that's the body. What lives outside the law when the law is muscled and violent, a boulder plunging off a precipice and crushing everything in its path. How do they manage to wander around so happily and comfortably in their bodies, how do they feel so sure, so confident in being what they are: this blood, these organs, this sex, this species? Haven't they ever longed to be a lizard scorching in the sun every day, or an old man, or a vine clutching a trunk in search of somewhere to hold on, or a boy sprinting till his heart bursts from his chest with sheer brute energy, with sheer desire? We're forced to be whatever we resemble. Haven't you ever wished you knew what it would feel like to have claws or roots or fins instead of hands, what it would mean if you could only live in silence or by murmuring or crying out in pain or fear or pleasure? Or if there weren't any words at all and so the soul of every living thing were measured by the intensity it manifests once it's set free?            © 2019 Claudia Masin and Robin Myers. Published in Poem-a-Day in partnership with Words Without Borders (wordswithoutborders.org) on September 28, 2019, by the Academy of American Poets. About This Poem   "'Tomboy' comes from a book of mine called Lo intacto, a series of poems based on movies; in this case, Céline Sciamma's eponymous 2011 film about a gender non-conforming child. The poem came to me in a flash; I barely edited it at all. After I saw the film, I had to speak in the voice of this child as a way to address the damage caused by stagnant conceptions of identity; the need to free this power, which so fiercely resists domestication and regulation, that lives in each of us; and the infinite capacity of our own imaginations for empathizing with what surrounds us. In the end, I think that prejudice and cruelty spring from an utter lack of imagination, an inability to think of ourselves beyond whatever we seem to be." —Claudia Masin   Claudia Masin is a poet and psychoanalyst. Her most recent books are Lo intacto (Hilos Editora, 2018), and La disobediencia (ConTexto, 2018), a volume of her collected poems. She lives in Buenos Aires, Argentina.   Robin Myers is a poet and translator. Her most recent translation projects include Cars on Fire by Mónica Ramón Ríos (Open Letter Books, forthcoming in 2020) and Animals at the End of the World by Gloria Susana Esquivel (University of Texas Press, forthcoming in 2020). She lives in Mexico City, Mexico. Poetry by Masin   Lo Intacto (Hilos Editora, 2018) Poetry Translated by Myers   Lyric Poetry Is Dead (Cardboard House Press, 2018) "When I Grow Up I Want to Be a List of Further Possibilities" by Chen Chen "Dear Melissa: [a curve billed thrasher]" by TC Tolbert "We All Return to the Place Where We Were Born" by Oscar Gonzales Celebrating National Translation Month   Today's Poem-a-Day poem is presented in partnership with Words Without Borders and is a winner of their inaugural Poems in Translation Contest judged by Mónica de la Torre. We will feature each of the four winning translations on Poem-a-Day every Saturday in September, National Translation Month. Your Support Makes Poem-a-Day Possible   Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. This free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on the weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038