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.
Red Poem
The vehicular traffic livens around the trunk. Horseflies of penury and buzzings of tedium. Colored scribbles, upon a firmament of gigantic ads chiseled by wretched hands. Ebbing of pedestrian afflictions. Funnel of beings suspended in the abyss, among multiple hungers, among lost churches. Upon the skeleton, the white paint and the curve erased by false planes. Someone loves features without form. Someone loves the trees less. By now they are weak branches that subsist divided between one cable and another.
Poema rojo
Alrededor del tronco se aviva el tránsito automovilístico. Moscardones de penuria y zumbidos de tedio. Garabatos a colores, sobre un firmamento de gigantescos anuncios cincelados por míseras manos. Reflujo de peatonales aflicciones. Embudo de seres colgados en el abismo, entre múltiples hambres, entre perdidas iglesias. Sobre el esqueleto, la pintura blanca y la curva borrada por falsos planos. Alguien quiere facciones sin forma. Alguien quiere menos a los árboles. Son ya débiles ramas que subsisten divididas entre un cable y otro.