Contemporary World Literature Poems from Mexico

By Melissa del Mar

Melissa del Mar studies Communication and Digital Media at the Tecnológico de Monterrey, and has a diploma in Mexican Literatures in Indigenous Languages (2019) from the National Institute of Fine Arts and Literature. She is the winner of the Woman Tec Award (2021), in the category of Art and Cultural Management awarded by the Center for the Recognition of Human Dignity of Tecnológico de Monterrey.

She is head of the Coordination for the Recognition and Promotion of Women’s Rights of the International Foundation of Art and Culture, head of Communication and Dissemination of Cardenal, Revista Literaria, Director of Art and Culture of PICO Informativo, columnist at Proyecto Ululayu, co-founder of the workshop All Names I Am of feminist creative writing, and co-founder of the podcast (In) visibles.

Melissa del Mar has been published in digital and print spaces such as Buenos Aires Poetry, New York Poetry Review, CONECTA, Reforma, El Universal, Milenio, MásCultura de Librerías Gandhi and has performed at TEDx, Feria Internacional del Libro, Festival Mesoamericano de Poesía, Encuentro Nacional de Mujeres Poetas Jóvenes, among others. She is part of the anthology Novísimas Reunión de poetas mexicanas (1989-1999). Her poetic work has been presented in Mexico, Argentina, Belgium, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, Italy, Peru, Spain, and The United States. 

Nahuales’ Sunset

 I see you

In Tonanxochilco

Womb that bore our daughters out of nostalgia

In the distance of the dust that rises

Like wanting me to remember!

 

Where the ahuehuete leaves fade

There your echo, which like a tide spreads until diluted,

Is a silent red-breasted omen

Indicating your nocturnal return!

 

I remember your voyage, that so many ignore,

The one printed on stone, waiting to hug your flat hill,

Canicula

In the navel that saw

The sun being born!

 

Sour land, cracked

That cries out to be recognized,

Like all the deaths, still nameless

Between rocks and cliffs,

That today receives the legacy of a title

That everyone knows other, where

 You still are.

 

I feel you

In the wood that stands

In fumaroles that imitate wandering souls

Of this land that is of transit,

Seeds that

Dry rage; in your guts

That are being cooked

And among the desert that I find pirul,

I see you in shadows as you walk through the roots,

Just as you were,

When you left!

 

Cuauhxochitl, sweet tangled in your hair

Preserved as the thorns that today I remove from your green forehead

Filled with a fruit that is conceived red, protected.

 

And you fade into flavors

Those of this dark mount crowned with symbols we don´t own,

On nights of heaven pillars of lime,

That spices you up, sweeten and make you bitter.

 

That is enough for knowing you are alive,

Knowing you are tonal languages,

Knowing you are other languages,

Knowing mother tongues,

Knowing your own tongue,

Knowing each other without words

Knowing pain,

Knowing hurt,

Knowing that,

Like you.

I am still alive.

 

I taste you

Mystical earth, I smell on your tanned vanilla and dry sand skin

The collapse of sweat and breath!

 

I believe in you and what your mouth (that will not ever be mine)

 Preaches with words that

Through the passing of the day,

Will leave the body to stand free when falling!

 

With your hand that reaches out to mine,

As it always did,

To request,

To give,

You perfume the hours when they try to forget you,

And you get in,

You dominate,

You wonder,

You dance to the moon, which will soon

Be reflected in lakes of dark blood,

And you’ll find, in the stench of dead flowers

Like your sad sisters,

The strength to remain standing,

Like you still are!

 

I breathe you

When tears come out of rocks and the

Howling drum whispers,

Naming you, panting between whistles

And I know every blow, as a tide,

A voice

Your voice

Like a surge that returns.

 

Every vibration, trembling like

The back of a grievance soon to be born, calls you.

 

The leaves speak in a language that tastes like secret rain

And between murmurs of indigo dye

A melody that

Only the sea sings,

 The ground kisses the bare foot

That prays in tongues that only in the wind are written.

 

And now that I touch you,

I feel you walking paths in my hands

While continuing your journey stepping between salt water plateaus,

A home that quietly flows

Draining back to the caves where they belong,

Where waiting for all your daughters,

That someone else found along the way,

You still are.

 

I hear you

And the afternoon already has the eyes of all the mothers

Who only see haze in the day

When people start to forget,

A day scorched between lights that no longer grow,

A day

Another day

Without knowing how to put a face to the broken bodies,

To your and my bodies,

To everyone’s,

Penetrated until they catch fire

In the ovens of the wasteland,

Until they dissolve into ashes.

 

They,

Those I cannot name, because there is no longer a face on their bodies,

Wait like Nahuales until it gets dark

To greet those who stand by,

Those who keep looking,

Those whom despite knowing them dead,

Buried,

Missing,

Between sunsets

Believe you are alive.

Because you still are.

 Today, as then

 Bindweed of water, inhabited by the spiral

Of the sea and the shadow, fertile land

Your mouth is,

Where words are born again!

 

We dream of ourselves as plants

To understand the words

That the grass emanates

When we hear it!

 

The stems that the dawn brings,

Burst from you

And they unite us all like your daughters,

Twinning each bud

Bulb, field, 

Seed!

 

We germinate from the root of the tule

And we cross branches

To heal our inheritances

Herbs, wounds, and

Today, as then,

We name ourselves as one

Facing the death that plagues us!

 

 We are the foundational verb

In your language that is the placenta.

Fruitful maple oil you emanate,

To give us life, wind

Word of your womb!

 

We will walk birch trails

To reach the threshold that dwells us,

And so enraptured,

We will plant your memories

And cover them with moss,

To avoid that,

Today, as then,

They all get trampled.

    

We recognize each other in your milk tongue,

That also is

Countryside, where

Despite the death inhabited in your substrates,

We will learn to sing other

Melodies which are not just to

Accompany sorrow.

 

I thank the nectar that runs out from your hand,

Like lichens of warm honey,

Threads of light,

From which you nourish the mouth of stone.

You slow down, spike, in the wheat field of your verse,

The raving of life that passes by, and

Today, as then,

Your strands weave us past, present.

And so, we are one in the dust that reminds us,

We are all

On the griddle that reinvents who we are.

 

 And if they intend to bury our branches,

Snake-like steam will come out of our oaks

To say, never again in silence, that

Today, as then,

We will continue to sprout.

 

 And if burning us in bonfires they seek,

We will burn in flames that paint the sky,

To remind you that our fire cannot be put out with water, and

Today, as then,

We will resist.

 And if they want to tear another of us off the ground,

We will use as rain the crying of women that have been taken away from us,

In graveyards, we will sow in their memory jacarandas and

Today, as then,

Each time stronger,

We will be born again.

_____________________