Shadows of Snow

TRANSLATED FROM THE SPANISH

BY LAYLA BENITEZ-JAMES

I feel two hands on my open heart, the light-flesh caressing
me. I don’t know if they love or kill me for between
my thighs a bird is born, smeared with excrement

and with blood

and I cut the umbilical cord so that it flies within
my dreams

It’s snowing birds: Why?

Alone

I look

my interior snows: bleeds

I reject the cage door so that light escapes from my
narrow blood

My sisters wake,

and I am alone

and there are no souls

and the birds burn

: Everything is full of cages of light

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ÓSCAR CURIESES is a Writer, translator, and professor. His poetry collections include Sonetos del útero, Dentro, Icebergs, and Hay una jaula en cada pájaro. He has translated books by Rolando Pérez and Sharon Olds into Spanish. He received his doctorate in Literature and Fine Arts from Universidad Complutense de Madrid.

LAYLA BENITEZ-JAMES is an Artist and translator in Alicante. Work has appeared in The London Magazine, The Acentos Review, Anomaly, Guernica, Waxwing, and others. Her chapbook, God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode But He Had to Make Sure, was selected by Major Jackson for the 2017 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize and published in 2018.