poetry

Ç
 Machu Picchu Spanish Conquistadors
Jorge Alejandro Vargas Prado
jorgeavargasp@gmail.com

Meme by: Innoxious Inca Memes

Photos by: Internet and Boris Mercado Mar
Proofreader: Pieter Odendaal <3

All poems translated by Jesús de la Garza, Martina

Hoines and Pieter Odendaal, except “Query 1”
translated by Herson Barona and Jesse Leonard due
to Dante Tercero. To all of them: Thank you so much.
We really appreciate it and love you. <3

We used Avenir Book and Avenir Black fonts.

Jorge Alejandro Vargas Prado says: “Hi. I’m a guy

from Cusco, Peru’s historical capital city. Cusco is
cool cause is kind of a non-westernized city. I write
and learn how to make music. Some friends of mine
translated this poems and I wanted to share them
with you :v <3. These poems come from the books:
“Los bonitos también cagan”, “T’ikray” and “La ultra
iridiscencia de los dioses del Perú” all available at
www.perrodenieve.tumblr.com”.

Chiri Uchu Press

Cusco
Peru
Made by ayni.

  1
   2
 Borderline poem 3

Today, I shat very well without noise and

easily.
I shat thinking about you, and to be honest,
I’m not ashamed anymore.
(Understand this: pretty boys also shit)
To think about intestines you have to
understand that the blue ass of a Russian
smells the same as a beautiful Peruvian
soldier’s ass.
I get drunk and think about my stomach’s
clay.
Sunsets.
Then, I realize an overwhelming truth:
Each morning I shit my heart out in pieces.

  3
 Borderline poem 10

I’m tied to the ground like a sad child’s

balloon or the smile of a drunk.
I’m made out of cardboard and milk, of darts;
I’m made up of feathers you don’t have but
that I invented for you.
I’m a stone at the window of God; I’m also
the stone in your dirty window.
I am a plastic kite and a boat in the bathtub.
I’m a bathtub of hot water, with Pisco and
eggs for your stomachache.
I am, I’ll say it now, your dirty laundry.
I’m tied to the sky by every fiber of
December’s rain, I’m blue incense.
I’m the unmovable afternoon right where you
are.

  4
 Query 1:
Untie the following knot.

Arthur, 22, lives alone. He arrives home after

really opening his eyes to the world. He
prepares a cup of warm milk for himself,
extremely sweet. He puts his headphones at
65 dB, chooses Foals’ “Big Big Love (Fig. 2)”
on his mp3 player, turns off the light and,
finally, drinks the sugary milk. Now, the result
of the addition of the aforementioned
elements (22 years old + keys of his own +
psychoactive substance + colors so powerful
and simple as the rotation of the stars + warm
sweet milk, at the very moment in which
another beautiful Peruvian boy —very far
away— understands the new sadness of
trees) inside Arthur’s brain, is:

a) God
b) the poem
c) you
d) a healthy baby who whispers in quechua
e) eternity
f) other: _____________________
  5
 Query 3:
Read this text by Lady Chávez Flores and
answer.

Hey, waiter, friend, a volcano-mountain

grows in our backs every time you light a cig
or open, in a shot, the beers that I can’t open
with my teeth. You look at me and I call you:
Hey, friend. Beautiful friend.
And I write on the label I've peeled off my
damp beer bottle: “Steven, are you
conscious that when you open your eyes
sportsmen and dessert spoons and fireworks
stop, and Britney’s dance and the river of
beer that flows in the world’s intestines stop
too? Are you conscious that the T-Rex’s
hungry jaws in your eyes swallows everything
that’s beautiful and free? Are you conscious
that we drunk women are free and
overwhelmingly beautiful like a drop of
mercury in outer space.
I’m drunk, Steven, beautiful waiter at Jaka,
close to my university. And just out of
goodness you accept my beer glass that, you
don’t know, is a cup of my mind’s snow. A
glass of condor’s blood, free and beautiful, in

  6
my mind. A glass of sheeps’ head soup that I
cut for you.

a) Why is there a volcano-mountain

growing from the drunken woman and
Steven?
b) How would you describe the intestines
of the world?
c) How is a drunken woman free and
overwhelmingly beautiful?
d) Why do almost impossible events occur
when Steven opens his eyes?
e) For the drunken woman, what does the
glass of beer she offers to Steven mean
to her?
f) What happens to you when you are
drunk and someone digs through your
chest’s clean earth with the beauty you
see in them?

  7
 **********

The sky is cadmium, cobalt, iron, bronze and

blueish.
And the rocky claws of my hands, now that
I’m a puma, multiply in geometric motifs.
Brightly-colored rhomboid patterns repeat
themselves.
Say goodbye to the last geometric rains of
April
say goodbye to Venus, who holds hands with
the moon
say goodbye to the buses hairy like arctic
bears
say goodbye to me:

Awilitáy, Ishishcha, Ishishcha, Ishishcha,

Awilitáy, Awilitáy, Awilitáy

As this might be the last time I pronounce or

write all your names with this electrified
sadness.
Inside the rhombus are the divine colors

  8
 that are the colors of Peru
that are the colors of the stridency
that are the colors of a fluoric huayno concert
that are the colors of each one of the
Amazonian tongues
that are the colors of the eyes and skin of the
same god multiplied and diversified.
The gods cry at the back of our neck that is
their home, that is the gaseous dimension
where they gravitate peacefully, it is the
plane next to the still sea of amniotic fluid.
The roots take my legs, a group of women in
white invite me to close my eyes, small elves
play tricks on me, I travel laid back on a
canoe that slides through a river of musical
bubbles.
The burning pile of your names, your Spanish
tarot cards, the iridescent book of your
absences crosses the tense and translucent
layers of my skin.
Some ants display their beautiful feet over
the keys of a synthesizer.
The formidable show of an insect moving on
his back, the cosmic crystal pool of the
insect’s eyes, the double-faced trees, the
  9
 light blue aura of the stones, the mirror that
emerges from the tied hands of Venus and
the moon.
The castle that contains us.
The house that I build again with columns of
cigar smoke that keeps warm those who have
died of cold.
The bedroom that I build again with coca
leaves that feed those who have died
because of hunger like you, like you, like you
and like all my other grandparents from 500
years ago.
I depart with my buttocks stronger.
I depart now that I’m old.
I depart because I have seen your faces on
religious stamps.
I have vomited the old house of terror.
I’ve vomited the plastic factory, the asbestos
skyscraper that was built on both sides of my
breastbone.
I’ve vomited rotten dinosaurs.
I’ve vomited all the
sins of the world
and the blue wounds
  10
 that flew from my mouth
like big nocturnal butterflies.
I’ve vomited shells and knives and stones with
sharp edges
and tempests and metallic shoes
and the cadmium, cobalt, iron, bronze and
blueish
of the sky.
I’ve vomited both sides of my breastbone
and the shell of my body.
And I was no longer the imperative
procession of your names, because not only
did the ants and a Peruvian dog painted with
the colors of the gods accompany me,
but I knew how to recognize you in the stars.
I say goodbye because I must build my home
in the profound valley of my breast
where you will be the highest and smiliest
trees in the world
where nothing will be missing and no one will
die because of hunger or cold.

  11
 I say goodbye with bright eyes, the same way
you say goodbye and celebrate the last rains
of April.
I’m a puma crowned with a traditional hat by
small elves.
Looking for you I have awoken the gods in
myself.
Say goodbye to me celebrating the
projection of the prism over my forehead.
Say goodbye to me forgiving my sporadic
tractor clumsiness.
Say goodbye to me opening the eye of your
own forehead.
Say goodbye to me thinking of the still sea of
amniotic fluid
and of the gaseous dimension where gods
rest.
Say goodbye to me thinking of the balance
and explosion of the clouds
that lift our new home in the stars.

  12
Do not think.
Do not judge.
Do not presuppose.
that life stops and muddles itself that way.
Trust the sky-blue sword of your body
the sea
and the purple magma that boils in your
head.
Let the trees point cloudward when you point
cloudward.
Let the dogs bark.
Do not be scared
because fear can corrode the diamond
mountain ranges that sustain us.
Do not be afraid of the flower of your frown.
Love is patient.
Love flows like the river of stars above us
immense
bright
and quiet.
Do not fear the astonishing hurricane of fire
which is just a confused reflection
  13
that your eyes project
onto the chest of this
turquoise star
cubic-spherical-African star
rotating atom
brother of the sun.

  14
 * **
Guíame Sr. de Qoyllurrit’i

  15