Visual description: A gif featuring red text on an ivory cream background, the colors approximating the printed version of Carolina Dávila Diaz's book, animal ajena, published by Cardumen (an imprint of Laguna Libros) in Bogotá, Colombia in 2022. Around the text, there is a circle that looks digitally sketched, its edges mimicking the tactility of hand-drawn marks. The text itself consists of two texts, arranged in two columns. The column on the right is upright, legible, in either English or Spanish (depending on when you look). The column on the left is upside down, in the other language. Periodically the gif springs into motion, the outer circle rotating 180 degrees in one direction and the text rotating 180 degrees in the other. Thanks to the rotational shift in perspective, the language of legibility shifts. And then shifts. And then shifts...
Static textual transcription:
Cutting ties
You gnaw at your nails
Everything sets me on edge you say
and the irritation grinds on
You retain the pain of the organic
calcium peels off in your fingers
and your mouth drips wet with acidic spit
Better the inhospitable you think
blood has been the tribute
Better this muck and mire
your blood your own blood never again
Tradition spins you shift your gaze
you move with another familiarity
and you forge new kinships
You look at your fingers
you slide them like freshly sharpened pencils
a slash struck through names
you won’t respond to anymore
(homo) neanderthalensis(homo) sapiens
cyborg
from alien animal
by Carolina Dávila Díaz
tr. Ryan Greene
Romper el lazo
Cortas con los dientes las uñas
Se me destempla todo dices
y aún no termina el rechinar
Conservas el dolor de lo orgánico
el calcio se descascara en los dedos
la boca se llena de saliva ácida y liquidísima
Mejor lo inhóspito piensas
la sangre ha sido el tributo
Mejor este cenagal
tu sangre tu propia sangre nunca más
Rota la tradición volteas la mirada
te mueves con otra familiaridad
y creas nuevos parentescos
Miras tus dedos
los pasas como lápices recién afilados
un tajo sobre nombres
a los que ya no respondes
(homo) neanderthalensis(homo) sapiens
cyborg
de animal ajena
(Cardumen, 2022)
por Carolina Dávila Díaz
For an added treat, click on the gif below to experience an interactive "transfluxion" of three lines from the poem (works best on screens bigger than a phone).
Visual description: Another gif, with ivory cream text on a red background, its colors inverted from the gif above. Here three lines from the poem hover with arrows below. As the recorded mouse clicks on the arrows, we become aware of the text as a (seemingly) three-dimensional entity rotating along one of its axes to reveal either the text in the other language or a small snippet of paratext. The text itself reads "tradition spins you shift your gaze / you move with another familiarity / and you forge new kinships" and "rota la tradición volteas la mirada / te mueves con otra familiaridad / y creas nuevos parentescos".
Carolina Dávila Díaz is a poet and editor from Bogotá, Colombia. Her book Como las catedrales won the National Award of Poetry in Colombia in 2010. She is also the author of Imagen (In)completa (2018), animal ajena (2022), and Buenavista, un kilómetro (2026) and co-editor of La trenza, a poetry, essay, and illustration magazine. She is part of Contaminación Cruzada, an artistic and poetic intervention project that explores the possibilities of language in public spaces. She lives in New York, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in Latin American Literature and Art.
Ryan Greene writes, translates, makes, and caretakes books in "Phoenix, Arizona," the city where he grew up. His most recent translations include projects with Carolina Dávila, Elena Salamanca, Claudina Domingo, Ana Belén López, Yaxkin Melchy, and Giancarlo Huapaya. He's learning.
