Sister

Today I bring you a poem written in English which, as a matter of fact, is one of the many stories my grandmother told me about her harsh childhood in Castile, picking up saffron with her sister in October, walking barefoot and dressed with potato sacks. Laurie Beth Clark was kind enough to include it in her collective project Ossuary, which has been on display at the University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery in Knoxville for the last month.
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Hoy os traigo hoy un poema en inglés que es, en realidad, una de tantas historias que me contó mi abuela sobre su durísima infancia en Castilla, recogiendo azafrán con su hermana en pleno octubre, descalzas y vestidas con sacos de patatas. Laurie Beth Clark tuvo a bien incluirlo en su proyecto colectivo Ossuary, que lleva un mes expuesto en la University of Tenesse Downtown Gallery de Knoxville.

More on Ossuary here/Más sobre Ossuary aquí:

http://ossuaries.wordpress.com/about/

Here is the poem/Aquí está el poema:

Sister

Barefooted
I said sister are we done yet
not quite she said the basket
despondent on our back
clouds stalking the light
as we bend down to pick flowers
our feet sliced open blood burning
we have been trudging
the land for hours have we not
are we not done sister said I
but she my older sister
who’s six years old
does not answer instead she
takes my lips with her fingers
pinching them shut

only when the light starts
to sink meekly do we carry back
our baskets full of saffron
to huddle together in the barn
dressed with potato sacks
why everything I tell you
of those days is true son
but be careful to always
keep to yourself a little more
than what you tell

(Fotografía de Laurie Beth Clark)

(Fotografía de Laurie Beth Clark)

Cuaderno Americano by Marcos Neroy is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.