Tupi or not Tupi? This is not a question; it is a devouring. I stand before the mirror of my own origin and I do not see a face, I see an appetite. To be Tupi is to eat the world, to swallow the stranger until his strength becomes my own blood. But to not be? That is the silence of the bone. That is the desert where nothing grows because nothing has been consumed. I feel the weight of this choice in the bridge of my nose, in the way my feet grip the floorboards. It is a dizzying … Continue reading The Hunger of the Identity

I do not sit at my desk to work; I sit as one who leans over a well, desperate for a drop of water that might save a life. Most likely, my own. We are not static things, you and I. We are a state of being kindled, a temporary flame dancing against the vastness of the dark. When I face the “white abyss” of the empty page, I am not looking for grammar or logic. I am a child hunting for a lost marble in the tall grass. I am looking for it, that singular, electric spark that says, … Continue reading The Sparkle

The anger in me is not a scream; it is a silence that has finally found its weight. It is a dense, pulsating thing that refuses the grace of a poem. To write a poem is to organize, and my anger will not be organized. It sits. It simply sits in the corner of my heart like a dark guest who has no intention of leaving, watching with wide, unblinking eyes as my words scramble to muffle their own noise so they do not deafen me. How can one speak of “one human race”? To say those words is to … Continue reading My Anger

Mother! Come, lean close. Listen to my head as it spills rich stories of places I have not yet traveled. Bring me ink, incarnate, visceral. Bring me ink the color of blood, blood! True, deep crimson. I need to stain the white of the page with the pulse of what hasn’t happened yet. Mother! Run your hand through my hair. Let your fingers find the map of my restlessness. I have not traveled, not yet, and yet my memory refuses to hold anything but departures. I am going to travel. I have a thirst, a dry, aching hollow in the … Continue reading January — 2016

É um silêncio de ovo, esse que se instala quando a última lâmpada do sonho se apaga. Não é uma morte de sangue, dessas que se noticia com alarde; é uma morte de fibra, um desfiamento lento do eu. “Quando deixamos de sonhar, morremos dentro desta realidade crua de desafetos.” E o que resta? O osso. O osso seco da verdade sem enfeites. A alma, que antes era melodia, torna-se um ruído de passos em corredor vazio. Eu me pergunto: onde vai o suspiro quando a esperança desiste de nós? A realidade, essa coisa árida e pontiaguda, nos espeta com … Continue reading O Alfabeto das Cinzas

Eu quisera habitar uma casa tecida de poesia. Mas não uma construção de tijolos e cal; antes, uma estrutura feita daquela matéria vaga que sobra entre uma palavra e outra. Ali, em cada canto, o ritmo não apenas soa, ele pulsa, como um coração que esquecemos de vigiar. As paredes não sustentam o teto; elas sustentam o sentido, adornadas por versos que me olham enquanto eu os leio. Nessa casa, o ar tem a espessura de uma metáfora. É um ar difícil de respirar, às vezes, de tão cheio. O chão? O chão é pavimentado por estrofes firmes, onde cada … Continue reading A Morada do Verbo

I committed the act: I verbalized. I tore the feeling from the dark safety of my chest and gave it the cold air of the world. I did it because the unspoken is a heavy meal that never digests; it sits in the stomach like a stone, a slow poisoning of the self. I prefer the sharp cut of the word to the dull ache of the secret. My anxiety, you see, is a creature with long, restless legs. It runs faster than my own heartbeat, outstripping my reason. It pushes the words out of my mouth before they are … Continue reading The Grammar of the Abyss

O amor jurava lembrar-se. Era uma promessa vasta, dessas que se penduram no teto da alma como um lustre pesado. Mas não naquele momento. No “agora”, o amor era uma mudez, um branco súbito na memória do coração. Quem sabe para amanhã haveria de ter mais sortes, ou quem sabe o amanhã fosse apenas outra forma de adiar o que já dói. Ela gostava da ideia de ajudá-lo. Ficava ali, à espreita do próprio sentimento, esperando saber ao certo o que fazer, como se a vida exigisse uma licença prévia para se manifestar. O mundo, ela sentia, era um lugar … Continue reading O Esquecimento do Amor

I am searching. It is a slow, rhythmic searching, like the pulse of a wrist that does not know its own body. I am trying to find a right home for my being, because I am different, no, more than that, I am unusual, a creature made of edges that do not fit the geometry of the world. What kind of home will do for a soul that feels like an unuttered word? Perhaps it is merely a humble, simple, tidy room. A square of silence where the light hits the floor at four in the afternoon, and for a … Continue reading The Geography of an Inland Sea

Listen, Life. I am speaking to you from the center of a convulsion. Do you hear this echo? It is not a sound; it is the vibration of a despair that has finally found its own shape. I am asking you—no, I am demanding—the right to not-be. There is a seething ache in the marrow of my spirit, a ravaging that is so intimate it feels like a birth. Guide me. Not toward a destination, for destinations are too solid, but toward the unshackling. Untangle these messy, bloody ties I have with you. I am tired of the “I.” I … Continue reading A Spasm of Living