Nothing knew
Your body
And yet,
It changed the rhythm
Of the waves.
Mariela Cordero, a poetess from Valencia, Venezuela, shares her poetry
Mariela Cordero, hailing from Valencia, Venezuela, born in 1985, is a lawyer, poet, writer, translator and visual artist. Her poetry has been published in several international anthologies. She has received some distinctions, including Third Prize of Poetry Alejandra Pizarnik Argentina (2014), First Prize of the II Iberoamerican Poetry Contest Euler Granda, Ecuador (2015), Second Prize of Poetry Concorso Letterario Internazionale Bilingüe Tracceperlameta Edizioni, Italy (2015) and many other awards. She has published the collections of poems. She has participated in several international literary meetings and festivals, among them: The Princeton Festival United States), Festival Internacional de Poesía Parque Chas (Argentina), Festival Internacional Bitola Memoria Literaria, Festival Internacional de Poesía Xochimilco (Mexico), X Festival Iberoamericano de Fusagusagá (Colombia) 2023 Kaohsiung World Poetry Festival (Taiwan). Her poems have been translated into Hindi, Czech, Estonian, Serbian, Shona, Uzbek, Romanian, Macedonian, Korean, Hebrew, Bengali, English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Polish. She currently coordinates the sections #VenezuelanPoetry and #WorldPoetry in the Poetry Magazine Poémame (Spain).
Nothing knew your body
The moon emerged in a sky
Barely divisible
From the dark waters.
Its appearance
Agitated the bowels of the ocean.
A name began
To be murmured
Hidden
In the murmur of the waves
Nothing knew
Your body lying on the sand,
Near the shore
Being brushed by the salty humidity.
Nothing knew
Your body
And yet,
It changed the rhythm
Of the waves.
***
You once followed the course of the packs
You once followed the course of the packs
Guided by that smell of furrows
Possessed by the dizziness that was spilling
Above the crowd
You learned to bite
And to dismember as the others.
You drank the revelation water late.
You killed your own in the dark.
You were part
Of the weakness that you devoured
You were
The prey.
***
The inscrutable eyes
The inscrutable eyes
That hide
Within galloping cities of steel,
Are behind
Thousands of other sleepwalking eyes.
They are indomitable narcotics
That mutilate the helplessness
Soothe the screams
And pour out caresses.
When they emerge
They take you by assault.
You know
That you will die
Invoking them.
***
The sensed features
All the faces go astray
On the journey,
The hungry memory
Aspires to retain them
But the traces and signs
Are diluted in the tide of bewilderment.
In the crowd blooms
Immediate
Like a blow
A unique face
Unknown
That imposes itself
And unsettles you
Until you are pierced
By the fulminating joy
Of ending the search.
The beloved face
Gathers
All the sensed features
________________________
