a poem
where I shatter self 
where I say no

*

no:
no offering
no trembling
no hands
no thirst
no telling
now more

*

no
no longer
this broken language

*

empty of you
these hands
dry pail

*

I am a silent river
for her to pass through 
and unknow her skin
on the water’s skin 
her body inscribed onto mine

*

you’ve left no space for your absence 
in these hands
nothing survives you

TRANSLATOR BIO: 

Layla Benitez-James is a 2022 NEA fellow in translation, a 2022/23 National Book Critics Circle Fellow, and the author of God Suspected My Heart Was a Geode but He Had to Make Sure, selected by Major Jackson for Cave Canem’s 2017 Toi Derricotte & Cornelius Eady Chapbook Prize. As Director of Literary Outreach for the Unamuno Author Series in Madrid, she edited its poetry festival anthology, Desperate Literature. Poems and essays are published in Modern Poetry in Translation, Black Femme Collective, Virginia Quarterly Review, Latino Book Review, Poetry London, and forthcoming in Poetry Magazine. Layla received an MFA in poetry from the University of Houston and has published reviews with Poetry Foundation’s Harriet Books.