2 Poems from Woman Submersed
By Mar Becker, Translated from Portuguese by Johnny Lorenz
two women
from so much water on the floor, the trail from bathroom to bedroom
that’s how a woman knows
another woman – knows if she’s washed her hair
from the loose thread of the elastic band, she can tell
this is the pair of underwear the other wears most
from the seeds of passion fruit clinging to her back, down the curve
between her buttocks
she knows the other’s fond of those natural soaps
touching the other’s breast, she’ll notice the imprint of a brassiere
or if she prefers not wearing one
from the taste of her sex, she’ll know
blood is coming in the next few days
nothing needs to be said
everything can be foreseen,
guessed
a man’s love for a woman depends
on so many words
but a woman loves another woman in silence
woman from the mountains
the woman born amidst these endless mountains, she gets up
her hair still wet from the day before, having washed it late in the evening
she feels the ground – the bottoms of her feet are always rough. she walks barefoot on
the stone slabs of her patio
she hangs the laundry. on weekends she eat grapes from the timid vine
the fruit is paltry, barely anything
even so, there are families that insist on cultivating
these are sad families. a kingdom
of various blues is at stake
.
she looks in the mirror. she takes off her underwear, an old pair
old because I can’t imagine the original color. it’s been washed so many times, the color fades
.
on sundays, after making love, she sleeps.
face down. legs half-open, immobile, making a geometrical shape in which we might
glimpse the angle of the roof of the house
when evening comes, she wakes
she gets up and walks in silence through the hallway, the living room
.
the woman born amidst these endless mountains always washes her underwear in the
bathroom, and the steam salvages the only sea possible here. the sea as desolation
at a certain point during her shower there’s no longer a line between the steam from the
showerhead and the steam from her humid breath
.
sometimes a bird about to lay eggs will enter one of the hollow spaces beneath the
eaves of the house. her nest ready, she settles in, deposits her eggs. in february and
march, a season of intense rain, it’s not unusual for one of the fledglings to fall – just-
born, horrible. purple. no feathers, just head and beak
the next day it’s swept into a corner to join the pile of spat-out grape skins. this is the
primitive school of color in the mountains:
carcass, harvest and hunger
.
the shower takes about ten minutes; it’s quick. those showerheads are quite old
all this time she’s been washing her underwear, stained with semen. as she washes, she
likes to think that
instead of going down the drain with the water, the semen, like alcohol, dissipates in
droplets of steam
she washes herself. breathes in deeply, as though the man who had just penetrated her
sex were now penetrating her lungs
afterwards
with her towel wrapped around her hair in a turban, she leaves the bathroom
transformed into some strange beast – something mythical, half-woman, half-rhinoceros,
her towel like an immense horn rising from the top of her head
she opens the door to the backyard, picks up the clothespin from the basket – and,
barefoot, warm and predatory, she hangs her underwear on the line
.
many pairs of underwear spend the night on the line, and then day breaks. the women
will collect them close to noon, when the mist has cleared
they will put their underwear on and wear them all afternoon
when night falls, the women emerge naked, then the men make love to them and tell
them their inflamed lips smell of the mist
.
in the morning, the sun gradually becomes visible. with hair flowing, voluminous, the
women mimic on a smaller scale the canopy of trees traversed by daylight
the mist inhabits the rooms, soaks into the furniture and curtains; and the dead
participate in the whole process, in that space; in silence
from outside, from a certain distance, on mornings such as these, the house can barely
be seen. the contours of rooftops and chimneys are lost
in her house another house is invented. in ruins
About the author and translator:
Mar Becker was born in Passo Fundo, Brazil and lives in São Paulo. She received her degree in philosophy from the Universidade de Passo Fundo and completed her postdoctorate in metaphysics and epistemology at the Universidade Federal da Fronteira Sul (Erechim). “A mulher submersa” (Urutau, 2020), her first full volume of poems, has received much acclaim. One critic refers to Becker’s work as a “monumental debut,” and another describes her poetic achievement in the following way: “Her poetry is not simply beautiful; it’s an entirely new animal.”
Johnny Lorenz, son of Brazilian immigrants, is a poet, translator and professor of English at Montclair State University. His book of poems, “Education by Windows,” was published by Poets & Traitors Press (2018). He has translated two novels by Clarice Lispector: “A Breath of Life” (2012), finalist for Best Translated Book, and “The Besieged City” (2019), named one of the best books of 2019 by Vanity Fair; both novels were published by New Directions. He has been awarded a Fulbright grant (2003) to translate the poetry of Mario Quintana as well as a PEN/Heim Translation Fund grant (2020) to complete his translation of “Notebook of Return” by Edimilson de Almeida Pereira.
