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 of the Birds that Sustained the Origin of Music (1998)
It was a year of masks, a time of dazzling swords and a forced, technical coming and going. Everyone spoke, feeling the impossibility of speech and like angels crying they opened their mouths to release their convulsive faith. The path was a stony rut. The sidewalks gushed with the sap of every seed, the sap of every sensing of leaf and insect. No one recognized this rolling. Each corner had its price. Each scale a system of ominous and turbulent weights. The multitude shouted in unison to the steaming desert, which was the desert of ruins: the deaf aridity of the uprooted. Children glued the pale little eggs of love together and governments plundered even the ashes. The heroes, transformed into muscles, rushed at the wind again and again. They fought, poisoned with their own shadows. The light had darkened and in the capital-letter geography of history, we made our home in a swamp hole.
Poema de los pájaros que sostenían el origen de la música (1998)
Era un año de máscaras, tiempo de espadas relampagueantes y de un ir y venir forzado y técnico. Todos hablaban sintiendo lo imposible del habla y como ángeles que lloran abrían la boca dejando salir su crispada fe. El camino era un carril pedregoso. Las aceras chorreaban la savia de cada semilla, la savia de cada sentir de hoja y de insecto. Nadie reconocía este rodar. Cada rincón tenía un precio. Cada báscula un esquema de pesos aciagos y tormentosos. La multitud gritaba en coro al desierto humeante, que era el desierto de las ruinas: la aridez sorda de lo arrancado. Los niños aglutinaban los huevecillos pálidos del amor y los gobiernos depredaban incluso las cenizas. Los héroes, transformados en músculos, arremetían una y otra vez contra el viento. Luchaban envenenados de su propia sombra. Se había opacado la luz, se habitaba, en la geografía mayúscula de la historia, el agujero de un pantano.