Amuya

Poetic skin

In the few moments of stillness, with her witty countenance, I listened to her “shyly” narrating her past and the countryside. In her memory, the orality of her father, of her grandfather, of my great-grandmother still remained. I never thought i had a great-grandmother but I did, I never knew her name, she didn’t remember it either. I asked her where she lived, what was her color, what was her smell, what did you like to do? Years and silences passed, until once on television we saw kings and queens in their robes. She just said, “There was that before, too. They were in the countryside. Your great-grandmother used to tell me that we served them everything! We were their slaves! Eventually they left, then other men arrived and took away the pots . . . Everything! But never our land, daughter.”

Here I share this textuality, which in this voracious time allows me, through indigenous-migrant and erotic poetics, the memory, and dialects that inhabit and touch both my own and the collective emotional “amuya.”

Slap-on-the-mouth^[1]

inmouth

outmouth

open-mouthed

mouthful

dry-mouth

mouthflapper!

Qasiwi^[2]

April all year long.
Well yes, it couldn’t be simple, I had stolen the accent from a word, I wanted to hear you name it,
it also occurred to me to get on a subway, I borrowed a verb, I wanted to surprise you and your
little black eyes.
I went through the calendar, a whole journey, and in the groove of your twilight I wanted to
remain, grab an ellipsis, and for you to play without hurting us.
In an instant, already in this century, in the streets the greatest inhabitant was silence, some ship
brought bands of seagulls, with their throats. My land ceased to be a memory, my chest
suspected the arrival of your song.
That time, do you remember? I saw you on your comet, you released a void and we invented
silhouettes in the mountains and their afternoons.
I got up, I jumped, I grabbed in that text the sleeplessness, I drew you in my cosmos. In April I
waited for you in my substitute armchair:
“Why not love what is good for us?”

My tongue sighed, that bravery, I searched for your warm fingers and for you to cross my bridge.
A leaf appeared that kissed my neck, hung up my verse, I lost that battle.
And remember? Still, love plays with my star and i am its window.

Amtaña^[3]

Where are you?
who wakes me from this bloody pain.
Where are you?
who strips me of my resignation.
and overflows drought where stream was born.

Juma
your eyes don’t know how to cry
you forgot that rebellion
it’s called kindness!
Where are you?
who smells of mundane things,
is torn to shreds by debris
you, you remain tied to Capital.

Juma
and the groove boils to perdition.
The sky is extinguished and the numbers grow.
The bodies are heavy:
—they tear out my heart!

My chest hammers
and the little ships dance.

Kamsaña!
You keep the heights
you don’t want to sin Kamachaña!
You, you want to overthrow innocence
they are 500 years old.
You squash with proverbs
Listen—it is not submission!
your tongue—crucifies!
your club—crushes mouths!

You, you don’t know how to cry.
The eyes on your back—they explode!

I hide in the daytime
and I wake up at dawn.
You don’t know about the raids.
Uma, throbs
seagulls no longer migrate,
Lorenzo is no longer heard.
Inti is tired,
ati knows it,
because soon,
(she) will come to an end!
Where are you?
where to ask for your identity?
Are (you) there?
In the sweat of the singing child
in the bare feet of the butterfly
in the struggle of the walker
in the female warriors
who awaken hope.
Where are you?
Mama chuyma
—our chests are burning!
we have
MEMORY!^[4]

J´ampati^[5]

I am distracted by mere existence,
pure
still
hard
flat.
The abject sequel charges at me.
A body that does not wait,
an excuse that clings
to the memory of silence.
A dream evicted
a memory that does not remember
a space that is a void
a sunset that has no ships.
. . . But what to say
to the kiss that does not touch
to the kiss that overflows
to the kiss that bleeds
to the kiss that does not wait
to the kiss that starts
to the kiss that dreams
to the kiss that sails
to the kiss of the nights
that of the early morning,
5 “Kiss” in Aymara. to the spinal kiss
that I loved so much.
To the kiss that embraces
to the kiss that,
cries
flies
crashes
and touches me.

I said goodbye to love

Yesterday,
I said goodbye to the last wedge of love I had left.
Yesterday,
I tried to die in her, drown and sucked my suffocation.
Yesterday,
my chest, sucked the air out of me and my heart leapt .
I couldn’t calm my eyes
I couldn’t make springs or cover them,
they broke so much that glass rained down on me.
And a girl came out of there
one who also jumped.
Yesterday, I understood why I lived,
yesterday I felt again that I was dying.
Yesterday, I ran out of breath and sucked in what I could.
Yesterday November took off:
September left,
and April was my bridge.
I undressed that little place
that makes us hide by day
and wake us up at night.
I stopped for a moment I traveled the world
I grabbed a boat
I sat down, I heard you blush.
Yesterday,
the gland, by itself, gave me away:
—damn it!
a stream in vigil.
A beauty died sweet.
I was mute, I called out to the cosmos, I climbed,
irrevocably
it wasn’t you and not even him, it wasn’t me and it wasn’t her either.
Yesterday,
I looked at you, waited 5 thousand years, my veins derailed,
some goblin jumped.
Yesterday,
I embraced your kiss
I felt your strings
I embraced your time
your mouth shone,
I turned off the world
I sucked your colors.
Yesterday,
I died, lived and let go:
the last wedge of love.

Pupu

You drew a map
to the secret passage
of the sides of my mouth.
You anchored time
I dreamed your freedom
it was of no interest to me
until I remembered.
I kissed you my language and my skin
on the other side of history
you wrapped your eyes
in my jungle as a lover.

Ninawarmi^[6]

That coca that fits you
the juicy-ninawarmi tongue.
the one that can spin
—sorrow and digs up the cry—.
sings sharp that footprint
in that stripping of freedom.
It rains here
the fire of your love
you tear away the curtain
ninawarmi
it rains on me
your voice
the aftertaste of pain.
The only exile I want
is the one
that waters,
the lands
of your love.
I open that window
laughter of resistance shines,
you stand in my warmth
ninawarmi.
You remind me
of that revolution.

Wrapped in your loom
I am faithful to your flock
ninawarmi.
You reveal waterfalls to me
you place barricades
on my nipple.
You awaken that eternal death
that which numbs.
You travel and burn
ninawarmi.
Winds are echoes
of a tomorrow
I swim and take
that taste.
you light tactics
in my veins
I take off and flutter
this time
ninawarmi
it’s rebellion!

No more!
The day I shouted
they told me to shut up,
the afternoon I cried
I had to endure,
the night I loved so much
they sewed up my heart.
It was an instant that I died
I turned to stone
immobile
and docile.
No more, never again!

Ñuñus^[7]

Cha ́rant ́atas and euphoric
my tits laugh inordinately,
every time you hammock in them.
Waterfalls of laruyañas^[8]
awaken
that abysmal silence.
You don’t stop
—I don’t want you to stop,
I want you to lean,
sink me and
—forms peaks on them.
My lips blush, and—muted they remain,
when you build spheres.

The thumb of your feet encircle them,
—gently—
and—I lose myself in that vertical smile.
Placid
—vulvas light up
—sweetly—
I tell of a latent mole
you pour cascades
—spongy—
on that pink left.
Wet already wet.

Wassy Kusilla^[9]

Almost 3 o’clock in the afternoon,
I got up
and my panties too.
She
She was all hugged up,
with the most muscular part,
sumaywassy
voluptuous and hidden,
it stopped me for a moment.
That sort of strumming
—continued,
led me to understand nothing
and live