In a newspaper photograph
an Indian from Bolivia
cries.
They killed her husband;
he was guilty,
or maybe not.
The Indian from Bolivia
lives in Buenos Aires
or in Madrid
or in a suburb
in the United States.
She cries
out in the open.
I stop and look at her face,
wrinkled and fat,
and then I understand.
The Indian from Bolivia
does not cry well;
she doesn’t know how to cry.
She deserves her fate;
her pain is lesser than mine.
From inside my gut, something ascends;
it is hate, I believe.
Now, I stop and look at the picture again.
It can’t be.
Now, it’s me, with my dead ones, crying out in the open.
She watches me
cry.
Pablo Brescia was born in Buenos Aires and has lived in the United States since 1986. He has published three books of short stories: La derrota de lo real/The Defeat of the Real (USA/Mexico, 2017), Fuera de Lugar/ Out of Place (Peru, 2012/Mexico, 2013) and La apariencia de las cosas/ The Appearance of Things (México, 1997), and a book of hybrid texts No hay tiempo para la poesía/NoTime for Poetry (Buenos Aires, 2011), with the pen name Harry Bimer. He writes the literary column El alma por el pie for Sub urbano (Miami, www.suburbano.net). His blog is Preferiría (no) hacerlo/I Would Prefer (Not) To pablobrescia.blogspot.com. He teaches Latin American Literature at the University of South Florida.
