When it comes to decapitations I just have to say one thing:
it’s tough to learn to perfect a smile for the executioner.
The executioner’s nobility, like a beauty pageant, has been
forged by long tradition.
Also present is the public, they haven’t paid admission,
they’ve endorsed justice without understanding it. They
listen to the leader’s voice without any sign of approval
whatsoever, just waiting to find out what a body with
no head is like.
But the show lasts only seconds. They know this: think
about second chances, about past lives, parallel worlds,
the beyond, and meanwhile, all the great ideologies can fit
into a refrigerator.
That’s why a poem isn’t a poem if it doesn’t know how to
suspend death. That’s why the axe never makes it to the
neck, but it’s there, at the point of dismembering it.
Álvaro Lasso was born in Baku, Republic of Azerbaijan, in 1982. At ten months old, he was relocated to Peru; he studied Hispanic Literature at Peru’s Pontificia Universidad Católica. He founded the poetry festival Novissima verba, the poetry magazine Odumodneurtse!, and the Libromóvil project. He is founder and editor of Estruendomudo, one of the most important independent publishing companies in Latin America since 2004. Lasso has published Dos niñas de Egon Schiele (Egon Schiele’s Girls), The Astrud Gilberto Album, and Izquierda Unida (United Left), republished in Spain by La Bella Varsovia in 2016. He lives in Santiago, Chile.
Kelsi Vanada’s translation of The Eligible Age by Berta García Faet was published in 2018 by Song Bridge Press. She writes poems and translates from Spanish and Swedish, and has recent and forthcoming work in The Iowa Review, The Bennington Review, The Literary Review, and Anomaly. She holds MFAs in Poetry (Iowa Writers’ Workshop) and Literary Translation (The University of Iowa). Kelsi is the Program Manager of the American Literary Translators Association.
