Jamaal May
Poeta, editor y maestro, nació en 1982 en Detrot, Michigan, donde ha enseñado poesía en las escuelas públicas y trabajado como ingeniero de sonido. Su primer libro de poemas Hum (“Canturreo”), publicado por Alice James Books (2013), mereció el Premio Beatrice Hawley. Ese mismo año ganó también el premio de poesía de la Indiana Review. Su obra ha aparecido en revistas tales como Poetry, Poughshares, the Believer, New England Review, y Kenyon Review. Jamaal obtuvo un MFA (Maestría en Bellas Artes) en el Warren Wilson College, y ha recibido fellowships de Cave Canem y del Stadler Center for poetry. Es editor-fundador, diseñador gráfico y cineasta del Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook and Video Series y docente en la MFA del Vermont College of Fine Arts.
Jamaal May was born in 1982 in Detroit, Michigan, where he has taught poetry in public schools and worked as a freelance audio engineer, working with such artists as The Four Tops, The Last Poets, and Dead Prez. His first book, Hum, received the 2012 Beatrice Hawley Award from Alice James Books, the American Library Association’s Notable Book Award, and an NAACP Image Award nomination. Other honors include the Spirit of Detroit Award, the 2013 Indiana Review Poetry Prize, and fellowships from Cave Canem, Frost Place, Bread Loaf Writers Conference, The Stadler Center for Poetry at Bucknell University, and Kenyon College where we was named a 2014-2016 Kenyon Review Fellow.
Recent poetry can be found in The Believer, The New Republic, Poetry, New England Review, Poetry Daily, Best American Poetry 2014, and the anthology Please Excuse This Poem: 100 New Poems for the Next Generation (Viking/Penguin, 2015). Recent prose appears online from Poets and Writers Magazine as well as The Poetry Foundation. From Detroit, Jamaal mentors young writers, teaches in the Vermont College of Fine Arts MFA program, and co-directs the Organic Weapon Arts Chapbook and Video Series with poet Tarfia Faizullah.
For more information about Jamaal May’s work please visit his website. Check out his Chapbook Press at Organic Weapon Arts website. You can subscribe to Jamaal’s poetry videos at his youtube channel
En versión de Francisco Larios, dos textos del poeta norteamericano Jamaal May (Detroit, 1982). Es editor y maestro de Detroit, Michigan, donde ha enseñado poesía en las escuelas públicas y trabajado como ingeniero de sonido. Su primer libro de poemas Hum (“Canturreo”), publicado por Alice James Books (2013), mereció el Premio Beatrice Hawley. Ese mismo año ganó también el premio de poesía de la Indiana Review.
Hay pájaros aquí
A Detroit
Hay pájaros aquí,
hay muchísimos pájaros aquí,
eso es lo que trataba de explicar,
mientras otros decían que esos pájaros eran metáforas
de lo atrapado
entre los
edificios. No.
Los pájaros están aquí
para hurgar por su pan
que las manos de la niña parten
y lanzan como confeti. No,
no quiero decir el pan es desgarrado como algodón,
dije confeti, y no,
no el confeti
en el que un tanque puede convertir un edificio.
Quiero decir el confeti
por el cual un muchacho no logra dejar de sonreír,
y no, su sonrisa no es del todo
como una calavera. Y no,
su barrio no es como una zona de guerra.
Lo que quiero decir
es que su barrio
es tan andrajoso y emperifollado
como todo lo demás
tan sombra perforada por el sol,
tan luz cortada
por danza-de-sombras como todo lo demás,
pero ellos no paran de decir
qué hermosas las ruinas,
cuán sufridos los adorables
niños deben ser en esa ciudad sin pájaros.
Canturreo del rayo
Por supuesto que podría ser seda. Unas cincuenta yardas
de lo más cercano al agua para el tacto,
o igual podría ser punta de lanza
hiriendo a un hombre entre yelmo y hombrera.
Pero ahora que la lluvia hace de esta ciudad un ruidoso
borrón, el relámpago arriba
y se marcha casi a la vez. Es lo que quiero
ser en este instante, en este portal,
pues por más que adoraría ser destello de seda
sobre cualquier codo,
por más brutal e impecable que sería volar
desde una ballesta silbante y extinguir un hombre
a mi llegada, nada es comparable
a aquel momento en que engullo la oscuridad,
trazo sombras a cortos pincelazos en la pared,
y empiezo un conteo regresivo
en dirección al trueno. El conteo que me dice
estoy así de lejos, estoy así de cerca.
There Are Birds Here
For Detroit
There are birds here,
so many birds here
is what I was trying to say
when they said those birds were metaphors
for what is trapped
between buildings
and buildings. No.
The birds are here
to root around for bread
the girl’s hands tear
and toss like confetti. No,
I don’t mean the bread is torn like cotton,
I said confetti, and no
not the confetti
a tank can make of a building.
I mean the confetti
a boy can’t stop smiling about
and no his smile isn’t much
like a skeleton at all. And no
his neighborhood is not like a war zone.
I am trying to say
his neighborhood
is as tattered and feathered
as anything else,
as shadow pierced by sun
and light parted
by shadow-dance as anything else,
but they won’t stop saying
how lovely the ruins,
how ruined the lovely
children must be in that birdless city.
Hum for the Bolt
It could of course be silk. Fifty yards or so
of the next closest thing to water to the touch,
or it could just as easily be a shaft of wood
crumpling a man struck between spaulder and helm.
But now, with the rain making a noisy erasure
of this town, it is the flash that arrives
and leaves at nearly the same moment. It’s what I want
to be in this moment, in this doorway,
because much as I’d love to be the silk-shimmer
against the curve of anyone’s arm,
as brutal and impeccable as it’d be to soar
from a crossbow with a whistle and have a man
switch off upon my arrival, it is nothing
compared to that moment when I eat the dark,
draw shadows in quick strokes across wall
and start a tongue counting
down to thunder. That counting that says,
I am this far. I am this close.
Still Life
Boy with roof shingles
duct taped to shins and forearms
threading barbed wire through pant loops.
Boy with a safety pin-clasped
bath towel of a cape
tucking exacto knife into sock.
Boy with rocks. Boy
with a metal grate for a shield.
Boy with a guardian
daemon and flawless skin.
Boy in the shuttered district,
a factory of shattered vials,
green and brown glass.
Boy with a tiny voice
and crooked cursive handwriting,
with bent nails in a pouch,
metal flashing scavenged in bits,
with half a neck tie
tied around the brow
pushing a fire door wide.
Boy with a boy living
The boy in the boy’s head
watches sparse traffic
from a warehouse window
and takes notes on where
overpass paint hides rust,
where the cyan bubbles up
into a patchwork of pock
and crumbling disease,
a thief in the bridge’s body
he doesn’t see, but knows
is coming tomorrow
to swallow his song.
Masticated Light
In a waiting room at the Kresge Eye Center
my fingers trace the outline of folded money
and I know the two hundred fifty dollars there
is made up of two hundred forty-five I can’t afford to spend
but will spend on a calm voice that can explain
how I can be repaired. Instead, the words legally blind
and nothing can be done mean I’ll spend
the rest of the week closing an eye to the world,
watching how easily this becomes that.
The lampposts lining the walk home
are the thinnest spears I’ve ever seen, a row of trash cans
becomes discarded war drums, and teeth
in the mouth of an oncoming truck
want to tear through me. Some of me
always wants to be swallowed.
The last thing my doctor said before I lost
my insurance was to see a vision specialist
about the way light struggles and bends
through my deformed cornea.
Before the exam I never closed my right eye
and watched the world become a melting watercolor
with the left. Before a doctor shot light
into the twitching thing, before I realized
how little light I could handle, I never
thought much of the boy who clawed up at me
I could see the reflective mesh of his shoes,
the liquor bottle tossed in an arc
even before it shattered at my feet, and I am embarrassed
at how sharp my eyes were, how deft my body,
my limbs closing the distance—how easily
I owned his face, its fear, and fought back tears—
all of it mine. I don’t want to remember the eyes
that glanced over shoulder just before
I dragged him like a gazelle into the grass
that was a stretch of gravel and glass
outside a liquor store. How easily this becomes that.
On a suspension bridge I close my bad eye
and it’s like aiming through a gunsight;
even the good eye is only as good as whatever glass
an optometrist can shape. I watch sundown
become a mouth. Broad and black-throated,
it devours the skyline and every reflection.
Horns sprout from the head of my silhouette
rippling dark, dark, dark against the haze of water
and I try to squint that monster
into the shape of a man.
Neat
Hidden by the overhang of a circular bar,
lies a man who’s seen the bottom of his tumbler.
No one is above being invisible,
not even me, with my shirt tidily pressed,
another man who’s seen the bottom of a tumbler.
Each swirl of scotch nudges closer to the rim.
Not even my shirt will stay tidy and pressed,
my tie cinched and secure. It’s waiting to unravel.
Each swig of scotch nudges me closer to a rim
every day, drops roll off the cliff of my parted lips.
My tie cinched and secure, I’m waiting to unravel,
waiting to spill into sleep—joints sore and speaking.
Day drops off a cliff. My lips part,
I drool on scuffs and bruises from boot and heel.
What I spill seeps, joins the floor, speaking
about straight shots taken to the head.
I’m all scuffle and bruises barely healed.
A swallow of whiskey won’t drown my questions.
Another shot won’t take me out of my head.
Why do I dress with this much care?
Swallow whiskey? Drown in questions?
Why a beard so prepared, ensemble so neat?
Why dress this carefully?
Why bother to drag a razor through the shadow
of a beard, prepare, assemble, neatly
tie a loop with no beginning or end, only
to be a bother, a draggled, razor-thin shadow,
hidden by the overhang of a circular bar.
Coming Back for You
Tonight the tide will stretch out. Syringes
and splinters of glass will be collected.
Shells and stones that aren’t needed
until morning will be left cleaving beach.
You’ll forget that sound in a month
then remember it on a runway waiting
for your ears to pop. In Pittsburgh
a vat overflows and scalds a foundryman
while a young chef somewhere smothers
a fire because she lost control of it.
In a backyard, a boy learns a boomerang
doesn’t come back to you, only your location;
if you should be elsewhere when I return
I may be lost, twirling out of view, while
exhaust hurries from a bus in Michigan
hurrying a bouquet of passengers from an airport
to the missed. An arm scratched red.
A zippered pouch full of cures. An addict
who can’t stop picking at his face
rolls a scab between fingers
for the remainder of the trip. You watch him
while stroking a cowry on the necklace I strung
in Oregon. A pair of teenagers too frightened
to head home fall asleep watching dawn,
the Pacific comes ashore to reclaim a hermit crab
finding only the shell, immovable where it rests.
Macrophobia: Fear of Waiting
I love too many women is not the best lead-in
for a conversation that will end
with me telling you I love you
for the first time. And this might not be
the best first date topic. I know this,
but I know it the same way
twelve-year-old me knew the firecracker
in my hand would be a dull burst
lost in the grass if I let it go too soon—
I’m asking if you are like me.
Do you let go too soon? Are you afraid
more of having hands covered in ash
than you are of getting the timing wrong?
This is stupid, but I couldn’t wait
to tell you everything
about the stranger, who after pushing
a peppermint over my teeth with her tongue,
told me she never wanted to leave
the listening range of my rambling.
This meant a lot coming from a wanderer
who would never have to hear it again;
I was booked on a plane that had already boarded
when a voice calling my name over the PA
reminded me I could not afford to wait for a later flight,
and ever since, I’ve been wondering
what runway my hesitation will invoke next,
wondering if it was bad timing
to finally ask for the dance I promised
after you had already become a twirling body
and nervous hand spilling rum across
someone else’s shoes? I get it, you got sick
of your life standing like a loaded gun—
everyday with me another hangfire. This wait
isn’t foreign to any of us. This wait is a friend
splitting blinds, looking for his cliché of a father.
It is a foot pressed against the door
of a locked closet. A girl stands on line in the rain
holding two concert tickets and this
is what rattles us, the space after
a question mark. Blood work and CAT scans.
What man faces a firing squad
without eventually longing for an exit wound.
This is stupid, but I was afraid to tell you
I kept fiddling with my phone through dinner
because I was fascinated
that every time I tried to type love,
I miss the o and hit i instead.
I live you is a mistake I make so often,
I wonder if it’s not
what I’ve been really meaning to say.
I want to say there is patience at the center
of every firework I hear bloom
from my balcony, signaling the end
of a Tigers game, but I can’t see them.
The second floor isn’t high enough. Clouds
above the taller buildings flicker, reflecting
their light, so tonight I’m going to watch that instead.
Make an evening of it. A dinner date
with myself and a bowl of handmade guacamole
from Honey Bee Market, and this time
I’m going to wait
to find out if one, just one,
can get high enough for me to see it explode.
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