Lydia Cortes
Jurutungo
Jurutungo: a Spanish word (used primarily in Puerto Rico) meaning far away or difficult to access. Also the name of neighborhoods in the Puerto Rican municipalities of Jayuya and Ponce.
lost
in a place so far away
Jurutungo
hard to get to
Jurutungo
where it’s easy to lose things
where keys go when
taking a mini vacation
Jurutungo
sometimes your glasses
end up there too
stuck in this
Jurutungo
without words
without coherence
Jurutungo
lost to the world
at the end of the earth
in darkness in the hell
in the heel of the world
in the ass of the world
worse still in the coño
cunt only coño in Spanish
word not as ugly
without words lost in
Jurutungo
without voice vocal
chords stripped down throat
closing in on itself crushing the chords
now are all twisted cannot vibrate
or tremble dried up ready to snap
I’m mute mousy lousy without words
it hurts too much to talk about the
Jurutungo
I’m in most hours of most days
lately the days supposing to get longer
still light has been drowned in a no end profound
so easy to disappear in lake found in
Jurutungo
without sound
my throat aching red with
rage not outrage this rage
is all in me in this
Jurutungo
I found and cannot get out of
without words I can find to put
down put together to get this
mad anger this coraje which in pr
we call anger but coraje also means
courage all courage gone along
with my words there’s room
only for darkness fear a wanting to
withdraw be back to a place safe
home where I can put down get out
some of the words stuck in fury
how to get out of this
Jurutungo
of rage where there’s no page
for words to come or
fear if they came they’d be dumb
fragile aborted fetuses of words
malformed that shouldn’t see light
still could I at least put those misshapen
fragments down to make some kind of sense
give some measure of release let go of this
seething this paralysis of my head my belly
my teeth all clenched hard
Jurutungo
coño coño carajo y puñeta
I explode red
words so scandalous angry my mother
would gasp paralyzed I’m at a loss
for thinking for moving for getting out
I can’t for I’m sick with this cold sick with
the state of my country my cunttree
‘tis of his so I pledge allegiance to rage
rage that keeps me tied up feeling raw
clouding my vision all shut up no words
coming to mind to put something down
sometimes I don’t feel a thing except maybe distrust
more like destruction I feel things coming apart I feel
anger coraje anger in Spanish also means courage
courage to find my words
Lydia Cortes is the author of the poetry collections Lust for Lust (Ten Pell Books, 2002) and Whose Place (Straw Gate Books, 2009). Her work appears in the anthologies Puerto Rican Poetry: An Anthology from Aboriginal to Contemporary Times (U Mass Press, 2006) and Breaking Ground: Anthology of Puerto Rican Women Writers in New York 1980-2012 (Editorial Campana, 2012). Recent work has appeared in Upstreet.
SUBMIT to What Rough Beast via our SUBMITTABLE site.
If you want to support the mission and work of Indolent Books, consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Indolent Arts Foundation, a 501(c)(3) charity.