Laura Solórzano was born in Guadalajara, Jalisco in 1961. She currently runs a small independent business as a textiles artisan in Guadalajara. Her poems have been published in various Mexican literary journals, most recently in Hoja Frugal (available free of cost from the editor, Dolores Dorantes, at doloresdorantes@hotmail.com); her most recent books are lobo de labio (chapbook, Serie poesía, Cuadernos de filodecaballos, Guadalajara: 2001) and Semilla de Ficus (Ediciones Rimbaud, Tlaxcala: 1999).
Jen Hofer is the editor and translator of an anthology of contemporary poetry by Mexican women which will be co-published by University of Pittsburgh Press and Ediciones Sin Nombre in 2003. Her other works include “Laws,” the July 2001 issue of A.BACUS, and The 3:15 Experiment, in conjunction with Lee Ann Brown, Danika Dinsmore and Bernadette Mayer (The Owl Press, 2001). Her first book of poems, Slide Rule, will be published by subpress in March 2002. Recent poems, translations and collaborations can be found in forthcoming issues of Antennae, Aufgabe, Chain, Kenning and Tripwire.
Poem and Desire
I wanted you in the cupola of the current skull, of the now made of clay.
I wanted your sure gray hairs and your silhouette
in spite of my doubts within the vertiginous clamor of the eternal tick-tock.
To have you among pines, that is to say, with your back to the broken roof
of my disillusion.
Days of seeing your established wound, your fleeting wound, in prodigious duet.
I wanted to say something without orifices, something that would permeate
a meaning like an old stain.
All of this is yours, I said, yours in the seesawing of the unattainable world.
I wanted to track your origin between my hunting fists and understand the dissolution
of vertigo, all within the fragile vehicle of a dinner.
Poema y deseo
Te quería en la cúpula del cráneo actual, del ahora de barro.
Quería tus certeras canas y tu silueta
por encima de mis dudas en el estruendo vertiginoso del eterno tic tac.
Tenerte entre pinos, es decir de espaldas al techo quebrado de mi decepción.
Días de ver tu herida constituida, tu herida efímera, en prodigioso dúo.
Quería decir algo sin orificios, algo que impregnara un significado como mácula vieja.
Todo esto es tuyo, dije, tuyo en el bimbalete del mundo inalcanzable.
Quise rastrear tu origen entre mis puños de caza y comprender la disolución
del vértigo, en el frágil vehículo de una cena.