Daniela Ema Aguinsky
trans. by Luciano Grigera Naón
I Hate Leaving Your Place
To go downstairs without you
is boring.
Eleven long flights
in butcher shop
lighting.
The hall is my anteroom:
I can linger a minute
or half an hour
standing
expecting
I don’t know who.
The time I wait
is the measure of my valor:
If quick to leave, I am empowered.
If I linger, a Passover lamb
ready for sacrifice.
But today no one is coming.
I look at the building across the street.
There, life happens.
Here, everyone has missed
the door
like the plagues.
The frame
marked with my blood
is effective.
After a while
a biker parks ahead.
I pretend
to look for the keys
then slip out, fast
into the sun
and forget
like someone who’s just run an errand.
Daniela Ema Aguinsky is a writer and filmmaker based in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her first book Terapia con animales (Paisanita Editora, Argentina, 2022, and Sindicato Sentimental, México, 2022) won The National Poetry Prize Storni in 2021. She is also the Spanish translator to the California-based poet Ellen Bass (Gog & Magog, 2021).
Luciano Grigera Naón is a poet and translator originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina. He holds degrees in English and Philosophy from Columbia University and an MFA in poetry from Brooklyn College, where he won a Himan Brown Award for a selection of his poems, served as a contributing editor at the Brooklyn Review, and has been teaching English and undergraduate creative writing.