Testigo
POESÍA
de Rocío Cerón
Golpe al piso. Palabra exclamada / musitada / anestesiada. O
grito profundo. Escuchar, o no escuchar, escuchar a medias o
entre tonos / muros calados, voz anudada a médula / linaje paterno
que se pierde entre la cal de la fosa común. Tabiques replican la
exactitud de la destrucción de una familia, de un pastizal que
atestigua el paso, el último paso, del bisonte blanco de la historia.
Witness
POETRY
by Rocío Cerón
A banging on the floor. A word cried out / muttered / anesthetized.
Or wailed deeply. To hear or not to hear, to hear just half or between
tones / latticed walls, voice knotted to the marrow / paternal lineage
lost within the calcification of a mass grave. Partitions repeat
the precision of a family’s destruction, of a pasture
that testifies to the trek, the final trek, of the white bison of history.
(translated from the Spanish by Dana Delibovi)
Rocío Cerón is a Mexico City-based poet, essayist, and visual sound artist. She is the author of fourteen poetry collections including Nudo vortex (Vortex Knot), published by Literal in 2015, and Borealis, from Fondo de Cultura Económica in 2016. Diorama, published in 2013 by McNally Jackson-Díaz Grey Editores, was translated by Anna Rosenwong, winner of the 2015 Best Translated Book Award from Rochester University. Cerón’s work has been awarded the Owen National Poetry Prize and the National System of Art Creators of Mexico Prize, and she received the Michael Rothenberg International Poets Grant in 2023. She has released three sound poetry albums—Sonic bubbles, Miiuni, and Speculari—and her sound, visual, and performance poetry pieces have been exhibited in international venues and museums including the Southbank Centre in London and the Museum of Modern Art in Mexico City. This poem, “Testigo” (“Witness”), will be included in Cerón’s next collection of poetry, Áurica Speculari, which is forthcoming from El Martillo Press in a bilingual edition with English translations by Dana Delibovi.
Dana Delibovi is a poet, essayist, and translator. In 2024, her collection of translations and critical essays, Sweet Hunter: The Complete Poems of St. Teresa of Ávila, was published by Monkfish. Her work has appeared in After the Art, Apple Valley Review, Asymptote, Ballast, Ekstasis, Noon, Presence, Psaltery & Lyre, Salamander, and other literary journals. Delibovi is consulting poetry editor at the literary e-zine Cable Street.
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