Verónica González Arredondo

trans. by Allison A. deFreese

Excerpt from I Am Not That Body

Two women in full flight, naked, in the middle of the night.
The older is the leader, arching her back;
she knows the stars and their turbulence,
how to avoid galactic cobwebs.
There are no reports of rain,
no sightings of objects without license to fly.
They are traveling with no apparent destination.
Clear skies
They are traveling with no apparent destination
smoke floats up from a chimney,
a newborn’s cry.
Provisions depleted
The Sabbath is coming.
An owl watches their descent.
It will be a crash landing;
the younger woman yanks the older woman’s hair
to avoid a free fall.

Verónica González Arredondo (Guanajuato, Mexico) holds a PhD in Arts from the Universidad de Guanajuato and an MA in Philosophy from the Universidad de Zacatecas. She also held a FONCA fellowship for younger artists through the Fondo Nacional para la Culturas y las Artes/National Fund for Culture and Arts and has published five books.

A 2021 NEA Literature Translation Fellow, Allison A. deFreese’s translations of Verónica González Arredondo’s poems have previously appeared in ANMLY, Arkana, Asymptote, Fron//era, Plume, Red Rock Reivew, and Waxwing. They were also published as a chapbook collection by Pub House Books (Montreal, 2020).