Issue Thirty - Summer 2017

Revolution in Croquet

By Eugenia Toledo (Chile) from Map Traces, Blood Traces / Trazas de mapa, trazas de sangre, translated by Carolyne Wright

Let's knit a shawl so the women can spend a warm winter
let's make it of basil and thyme for the pregnant mother

and of dried corn leaves for the country girl

let's knit a shawl to cover her shoulders

let's do it for all the women of this storm-colored sky

one just like it with different names

sewn with thread    seaweed transparencies

with stitches of smoke and fog    wool tied to our years

A shawl with weeping willows and moons for the weavers of Isla Negra

a shawl with ships for the ones who were imprisoned in their own land

a shawl of gulls for the anonymous women poets who speak the truth

a shawl of twilight harmonies for old age

a shapeless shawl for departing this earthly place

Let's weave it of crochet    as in the times of the Colony

down stitch    flat stitch and triple stitch

until we wear out our hands        the fabric of resistance

***

La revolución del tejido a crochet

Hagamos un chal para que las mujeres pasen el invierno 
hagámoslo de albahaca y de tomillo para la madre embarazada 
y de hojas secas de choclo para la campesina 
hagamos un chal para cubrir sus hombros 
hagámoslo para las mujeres de este cielo color tempestad 
una misma con tantos nombres 
cosido con hilos    transparencias de algas 
con puntos de humo y niebla    lana atada a nuestros años 

Un chal con sauces llorones y lunas para las tejedoras de Isla Negra 
un chal de barcos para las que una vez fueron encarceladas en su tierra 
un chal de gaviotas para las poetas anónimas que hablan la realidad 
un chal de acordes crepusculares para las de tercera edad 
un chal informe para huir de este sitio terrenal 

Tejámoslo a crochet    como en los tiempos de la Colonia 
punto bajo    punto raso y punto triple 
hasta que se nos desgasten las manos    los tejidos de la resistencia

Copyright Toledo 2017

Eugenia Toledo was born in Temuco, Chile, and grew up in the same neighborhood as Pablo Neruda. She came to the U.S. in 1975 to pursue a Ph. D. in Latin American Literature at the University of Washington. She has published a study of the Spanish writer Fray Luis de León (Editorial Cíclope, Santiago); three books of poetry in Spanish, Arquitectura de ausencias, (Editorial Torremozas, España, 2006); Tiempo de metales y volcanes (Editorial 400 Elefantes, Nicaragua, 2007); and Casa de Máquinas (400 Elefantes, 2013); and a chapbook, Leaf of Glass, which won an Artella contest in 2005. At Seattle's Richard Hugo House, she has taught poetry writing in Spanish, and with Carolyne Wright, team-taught a course on Pablo Neruda. A bilingual manuscript of poems, Trazas de mapa, trazas de sangre / Map Traces, Blood Traces, written after her return to Chile with Carolyne Wright in late 2008, won a 2009 grant from 4Culture, and is forthcoming from Mayapple Press. Poems from this manuscript, in translation by Carolyne Wright, have appeared in basalt, Cirque, Hayden's Ferry Review, Lake Effect, Los Angeles Review, New Letters, Palabra, Poetry International, Rio Grande Review, ZYZZYVA, and the chapbook, La luz ambarina de la lluvia: Letras de Temuko / The Rain's Amber Light: Letters from Temuco. With her husband, she currently divides her time between Seattle and her native Temuco.

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