NN3

^{translated by Anastatia Spicer and Honora Spicer}

speak?

will poetry speak?

I want to scream
My throat is dry
My throat, silenced so long, is coarse

In books I see that word I can’t pronounce
In the faces of my friends
Hiding in women’s bathrooms

(My grandmother was a seamstress in the factories
After the War of the Pacific she was widowed with five children)

will poetry speak up?

Let me tell you about the light burning
                                                     my breast
That clouds my dreams
Whose lace stays caught in my throat

Factories made of sounds
Factories made of mute women
Factories made of gazes

From when the sun comes up until I return home
I carry that word inside me
And if poetry spoke
what would it be? how?
Would it be able to tell of her rage?

NN3

¿hablar?

¿hablará la poesía?

Yo quiero gritar
Tengo la garganta seca
La garganta áspera de tanto estar callada

En los libros veo esa palabra que no puedo pronunciar
En las caras de mis compañeras
Escondidas en los baños para mujeres

(Mi abuela fue costurera en las fábricas
Después de la guerra del Pacífico viuda con 5 hijos)

¿hablará la poesía?

Déjame hablarte de la luz que me quema
                                                    el pecho
Esa que nubla mis sueños
Esa cuyos encajes quedan atrapados en mi garganta

Fábricas de sonidos
Fábricas de mujeres mudas
Fábricas de miradas

Desde que sale el sol hasta que llego a casa
Llevo esa palabra dentro
Y si la poesía hablara
¿qué sería? ¿cómo?
¿Podrá decir su rabia?

Copyright © 2021 by Victoria Guerrero, Anastatia Spicer, and Honora Spicer. Published on September 6, 2021, by the Academy of American Poets.

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“‘NN3’ is a poem that forms part of a collection entitled ‘Uprising of the 20,000.’ I wrote these texts thinking about female textile workers, industrial work and the enclosure of factories. The text establishes an analogy between the silenced voice of women and the questioning of poetry: ‘will poetry speak?’ In what poetry does not say lies its revelation and its revolt: in Vallejo’s ‘estruendomudo’ or ‘muteroar,’ in that silenced shout, in those censured bodies, poetry stands as a vulnerable language, but at once utopian.”
—Victoria Guerrero

“‘NN3’ es un poema que forma parte de una colección que se titula ‘Levantamiento de las 20,000’. Estos textos los escribí pensando en las trabajadoras textiles, en el trabajo mecanizado y el encierro de las fábricas. El texto establece una analogía entre la voz acallada de las mujeres y la interpelación a la poesía: ‘¿hablará la poesía?’ En aquello que la poesía no dice está su revelación y su revuelta: en ese ‘estruendomudo’ vallejiano, en ese grito silenciado, en esos cuerpos censurados, la poesía se erige como un lenguaje vulnerable, pero también utópico.”
—Victoria Guerrero

“We are sister-translators. Our goal collaborating on this translation was to convey dignity and reverence towards the work of the seamstress. The series centers on the 1909 New York textile strike and 1911 Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire, where the majority of workers who died were immigrant women. We attuned to how a stitch of detail composes and references a structure: the subtle translation ‘made of,’ as in ‘factories made of gazes’ obviates how industrial work is dependent on the social relations it produces. Poetry appears as material presence and political action, in ‘speaking’, ‘speaking up’, as it rises against silence.”
—Anastatia and Honora Spicer