7920.- JILL McDONOUGH

Jill McDonough (Carolina del Norte, Estados Unidos)

Poeta y ensayista americana. Da clases de escritura en universidades y cárceles de Massachusetts.

OBRA:

Faith. The body. Home, Boston University, 1998

Forgotten eyes: poetry from prison, Metropolitan College, Boston University, 2000

Habeas corpus, Salt Publishing, 2008, ISBN 978-1-84471-472-8

PREMIOS:

National Endowment for the Arts fellow[6]

Fine Arts Work Center fellow

Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center fellow

Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University

2010 Witter Bynner Fellowship

Tetas como martinis

El barman del Caesar’s cuenta chistes que hemos oído mil veces.

Un caballo entra en un bar, por ejemplo. Yo susurro

Sarah Evers me contó ese chiste en sexto y Josey dice

mi hermano Steve en 1982. Una puta, un enano, un chino,

nada que no hayamos escuchado. Entonces pregunta un cliente

¿En qué se parecen los martinis y las tetas? Y se echan a reír.

Se lo saben, todos se lo saben, excepto nosotras.

Ni siquiera se molestan en terminarlo. El barman sólo dice

Sí, pero yo siempre he dicho que debería haber una tercera, en la espalda,

para cuando bailas, y baila con una mujer de aire, tras la barra, su mano

sobre la teta de la espalda. Y entendemos que tres son demasiadas

y una no basta. Vale, podemos superarlo. Mis tetas me gustan

como los martinis, decimos: pequeñas y manoseadas o grandes y secas.

Perfectas. Desbordantes. Apestando a enebro, derramándose sobre la barra.

Cuando tengo migraña y ella se me insinúa digo Josey, mis tetas

son como martinis. Ella asiente, solemne: Más vale que nadie

les ponga las manos encima. ¿Cómo podríamos contarle al barman

estos chistes? No podríamos. No se enteraría. Lo digo mientras limpio

las vitrinas de la cocina y ella entiende: sucias y mojadas.

Caminando en el viento Josey dice Mis tetas son como martinis

y yo pido un taxi, sé que quiso decir heladas, temblorosas.

Versión: Julio Trujillo

Breasts Like Martinis

The bartender at Caesar's tells jokes we've heard a hundred times.

A shoelace walks into a bar, for example. I whisper

Sarah Evers told me that joke in sixth grade and Josey says

My brother Steve, 1982. A whore, a midget, a Chinaman,

nothing we haven't heard. Then a customer asks

Why are breasts like martinis? and they both start laughing.

They know this one, everybody knows this one, except

us. They don't even bother with the punch line. The bartender just says

Yeah, but I always said there should be a third one, on the back,

for dancing, dancing with the woman-shaped air behind the bar, his hand

on the breast on her back. So we figure three is too many,

one's not enough. Okay; we can do better than that. I like my breasts

like I like my martinis, we say: Small and bruised or big and dry. Perfect.

Overflowing. Reeking of juniper, spilling all over the bar.

When I have a migraine and she reaches for me, I say

Josey, my breasts are like martinis. She nods, solemn:

People should keep their goddamn hands off yours. How

could we tell these jokes to the bartender? We can't. He'll never know.

I say it after scrubbing the kitchen cabinets, and she gets it:

dirty and wet. Walking in the wind, Josey says My breasts

are like martinis and I hail a cab, know she means shaking, ice cold.

Fe: una traducción 

Downtown Crossing, en marzo: rosas, tulipanes,

narcisos en cinco cubetas de galón, acurrucadas 

en la nieve. La rubia que las vende lleva puestos unos guantes rojos.

Narcisos: diez por dos dólares. Sus delgadas

cabezas cerradas como serpientes jarreteras, pinceles. Una chica –

dieciséis, asiática, confundida– pregunta en lento y decidido

inglés por los narcisos. ¿Quién podría culparla?

¿Quién pagaría dos dólares por hierba carnosa, con una como 

lechuga bronceada en las puntas? La rubia junta sus dedos rojos

–la sombra de un pato, un gesto de chef francés– para ilustrar

floración, florecimiento. Ayudo, compro narcisos, me pregunto

si la chica es japonesa. Hablo algo de japonés, y podría decir

Sono hana ga… esa flor… ¿Alguna vez aprendí florecimiento?

Esa flor. Cerezos en flor de Tokyo, marzo. Esa flor

ahora un bebé, pronto una mujer. Ahora hay tres mujeres

comprando narcisos –¿nuestra florista contrató a la chica?– todas

reunidas, narcisos en una mano, con la otra haciendo la pantomima de florecimiento.

La chica mira de las cubetas a nuestros rostros, manos: narciso,

flor de la locura, flor del mudo entusiasmo. En la línea naranja del metro,

diez narcisos envueltos sobre mi regazo, el infalible japonés

en mi cabeza dice Mañana, esa flor gritará los buenos días.

Accident, Mass. Ave.

I stopped at a red light on Mass. Ave.

in Boston, a couple blocks away

from the bridge, and a woman in a beat-up

old Buick backed into me. Like, cranked her wheel,

rammed right into my side. I drove a Chevy

pickup truck. It being Boston, I got out

of the car yelling, swearing at this woman,

a little woman, whose first language was not English.

But she lived and drove in Boston, too, so she knew,

we both knew, that the thing to do

is get out of the car, slam the door

as hard as you fucking can and yell things like What the fuck

were you thinking? You fucking blind? What the fuck

is going on? Jesus Christ! So we swore

at each other with perfect posture, unnaturally angled

chins. I threw my arms around, sudden 

jerking motions with my whole arms, the backs

of my hands toward where she had hit my truck.

But she hadn't hit my truck. She hit

the tire; no damage done. Her car

was fine, too. We saw this while 

we were yelling, and then we were stuck.

The next line in our little drama should have been

Look at this fucking dent! I'm not paying for this

shit. I'm calling the cops, lady. Maybe we'd throw in a

You're in big trouble, sister, or I just hope for your sake

there's nothing wrong with my fucking suspension, that

sort of thing. But there was no fucking dent. There

was nothing else for us to do. So I 

stopped yelling, and she looked at the tire she'd

backed into, her little eyebrows pursed

and worried. She was clearly in the wrong, I was enormous,

and I'd been acting as if I'd like to hit her. So I said

Well, there's nothing wrong with my car, nothing wrong 

with your car...are you OK? She nodded, and started

to cry, so I put my arms around her and I held her, middle 

of the street, Mass. Ave., Boston, a couple blocks from the bridge.

I hugged her, and I said We were scared, weren't we?

and she nodded and we laughed.