Oriette D’Angelo

trans. by Lupita Eyde-Tucker

Knee on Dirt

[They say that the first stage of a fall
 is resistance]

Mine was the drop
Knee buckling 
hard

Femur on dirt
tibia on dirt
self-esteem on dirt
patriotism on dirt
the ego of a country sustained by fertilizer
the visceral manure
that makes us citizens

Knee tired of climbing onto so many platforms
Knee tired of endless marching
Knee tired of endless political posturing overdue

[payday
Knee tired of endless ministries

Femur wounded from so many queues
so little milk
so little bread
of being the pastry chefs of a country locked in the pantry

Tibia, fractured, in a cast
ligature of a city held together by bridges of sulfur
bare foot standing on plantations
exercising the muscle of disobedience
bare footprint against the pavement
always begging for the crumbs of history

Knee scorched from too much touching this ground
that burns me
and on the inside
is full of nothing but crude.

Oriette D’Angelo (Caracas, 1990) is an MFA candidate in creative writing in Spanish at the University of Iowa and editor of both the literary magazine Digo.palabra.txt and the research and broadcasting project #PoetasVenezolanas. She has an MA in digital communication and media arts from DePaul University. She is the author of two collections of poetry: Cardiopatías (Monte Ávila Editores, 2016, winner of the Emerging Writers Prize) and A través del ruido / Through the noise (Scrambler, 2020).

Lupita Eyde-Tucker writes and translates poetry in English and Spanish. She’s the winner of the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize for Poetry, a fellow at The Watering Hole, and a finalist in Columbia Journal’s Online Fall Contest for poetry. Her poems and translations have appeared in Baltimore Review, SWWIM, Nashville Review, the Florida Review, Asymptote, and Columbia Journal. She is currently translating two collections of poetry by Venezuelan poet Oriette D'Angelo. Her poetry lives at www.NotEnoughPoetry.com.