Contributions by Ariel Schettini
Ariel Schettini is a poet, critic, and professor of literary theory at the University of Buenos Aires. He has published two volumes of poetry: Estados Unidos (1994), and La Guerra Civil (2000). His work has been translated into English, Portuguese, and French. In 1995, he was sponsored by the United States Embassy to participate in the International Writing Program at The University of Iowa. His long-form essay, El tesoro de la lengua. Una historia Latinoamericana del yo (2009), revisits and rereads the most canonical poems in the Spanish language. His latest book, Ariel Schettini Presenta, is a collection of his introductions to Latin American books and is forthcoming from Editorial Casanova.
Ariel Schettini
translated by John Oliver Simon
SHADE SAILS
Not poppy, nor mandragora,
nor all the drowsy syrups of the world,
Shall ever medicine thee to that sweet sleep
Which thou owed’st yesterday
Othello III.iii
When night falls I’m another woman.
Because day is something else and falls into night.
Day and night. Given and withheld.
But I might have said: when day falls,
Worn out from being day all day long,
Night comes and transforms day
Into a bitch, a beast, a ferocious rising
And day’s no longer day, it’s night.
We call that process half-shadow.
Plants no longer release oxygen and begin to emit CO2
the half-shadow attacks
like a beast in a cape, under shade sails.
I’m a chicken spider, a tarantula making webs from darkness.
Weaving all day night’s inevitability.
I stop breathing — at twilight nobody breathes — like a spider.
Give her what she wants, and there, seduced, she stops breathing.
Nervous system … Read More »
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