Vertigo - Leon Spilliaert / WikiArt

From When I’m Not Around (Quando não estou por perto).

I don’t want to come back here
this said her face pressed against
the grate I repeat a familiar gesture
that seems to match the marble of the
lobby I repeat the same expression but
everything quick as a closing
of doors see you later I think see
you later or not until tomorrow until I
don’t come back here anymore except by chance
you look for a copy center
remember you need razor blades
immediately decide to replace the matches
used up last night at
dinner last night but everything
swift as a closing of doors a
lapse forget the checkbook on the counter by the
atm no time to say goodbye
avoid the problem of saying I don’t want to come back
anymore I’m sorry but with what look on her face how would
she find the most effective position for
her mouth for the length of that short phrase
that suddenly would take on miles and
miles I don’t want to come back here I’m
sorry I don’t want to look not even for a
few seconds this entrance or face
pressed against the grate another day
miles away from today stuck
suddenly to today another day or today the same
day this pressed face square aluminum
grate an aluminum face I have
ten aluminum fingers on the table or
the counter by the atm

Annita Costa Malufe

Annita Costa Malufe is the author of seven books of poetry namely, Alguém que dorme na plateia vazia (Someone Who Sleeps in the Empty Audience), Um caderno para coisas práticas (A Notebook for Practical Things), Quando não estou por perto (When I'm Not Around,), Como se caísse devagar (As if Falling Slowly), Nesta cidade e abaixo de teus olhos (In this City and Below Your Eyes), and Fundos para dias de chuva (Backgrounds for Rainy Days). She is also the author of two books of essays: Dispersed Territories: The Poetics of Ana Cristina Cesar and Poetics of Immanence: Ana Cristina Cesar and Marcos Siscar, both with funding from the São Paulo Research Foundation. She is currently a researcher at the University of Salamanca. In Brazil, she is a Productivity in Research scholar at the National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and teaches in the graduate program of Literature and Literary Criticism at the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP).

Janet Hendrickson

Janet Hendrickson translates from Spanish and Portuguese to English. Her experimental translation of Treasure of the Castilian or Spanish Language (New Directions, 2019), which turns a 1611 dictionary by Sebastián de Covarrubias into a series of prose poems, was longlisted for a PEN Award for Poetry in Translation. She also translated The Future Is Not Ours (ed. Diego Trelles Paz, Open Letter, 2012), a generation-defining anthology of new Latin American fiction. She teaches writing and translation in Liberal Studies at NYU.