Seres perdidos Septiembre devuelve partes de mi ser perdido A dónde estarán todas las partes de mi cuerpo? En qué huella? En qué nube? Volveré a volar otra vez?
Nuestros restos Los restos de ellos aún nos miran Dónde están tus huesos? Pedro Martin Federico Victor María Alicia Dónde se fueron a morir? Dónde podré buscar y ensangrentar mis manos? Algo negro vuelve a supurar en la memoria Algo viene devuelto desde la estación del exilio.
El día de mañana Mañana moriremos cuando queramos buscar y no haya sombras ni acequias dónde enlutar la voz Solo un clavel blanco retratará tu figura desaparecida Más allá del ojo en negro Más allá del tendón cortado en dos Más allá del septiembre que humea solitario En la última carta que recibí Cuando la mirada no era suficiente ni el grito Ni la mano perdida en los barrotes oxidados. En memoria de nuestros muertos y desaparecidos en esta fecha funesta.
Writer born in Viña del Mar, Chile. Professor of language and communication at PUCV, poet and literary critic. In 2012, she published her first book, The Invisible Eyes of the Wind. She has published in renowned Chilean and foreign digital media: Babelia (Spain), Letras de Chile (Chile), Triplov and Athena de Portugal, among others. During the year 2017 she participates in the Xaleshem group with poetic texts for the surrealist anthologies: “Composing the illusion” in honor of Ludwig Zeller and “Full Moon”, in honor of Susana Wald. In 2018, she integrates the feminist anthology IXQUIC released both in Europe and in Latin America. In 2020 she participates reviewing the conversation book “Shuffle poetry, Surrealism in Latin America” by Alfonso Peña (Costa Rica), also writes a poetic prose text for the book “Arcano 16, La torre“, by the same author. Likewise, she participates in the book “120 notes of Eros. Written portraits of surrealist women” by Floriano Martins (Brazilian surrealist poet, writer, visual artist and cultural manager). In this year (2021) she publishes her second poetry book Poética de la erotica, amores y desamores by Marciano editores, Santiago. The Extraviados is her third book published by Espacio Sol Ediciones (2023)
Every time I ordered my papers I found these poems that correspond to my years of militancy in the communist youth under the period of the dictatorship, which in my personal case took place between 1979 and 1989
Already a couple of years ago, around 1977, my concern for writing verses had been awakened, and I still have those first poetic stammers. Those sheets speak of those attempts to provide something different to the word, since when adding two, these would give a different meaning and significance, more subtle, in short, that it had a broader meaning.
I had finished high school, and shortly after I met a landscape painter and an art student, who showed me the secrets of easel painting, it was then that I was already clear that my destiny was the visual arts. Parallel to the instruction, I received from these two friends, others close to the cultural circle that was forming in the neighborhood, they enlightened me about the dark passages that happened daily in our country. There was the coup d’état, the intervention of the United States, the disappeared detainees, the torture, the prison and the political persecution, which were some among many the prison, and the political persecution, which were some of the many atrocities that devastated our people.
poetry was still present, and names like Nicolas Guillen, Ernesto Cardenal, or Roque Dalton had been added to my library. I wrote in my spare time, and much of that poetry served the cause of the offended and their fight for liberation for the construction of a new, fairer life. It was then, during a sunny winter afternoon that one of my friends invited me to join the Communist Youth.
I accepted and from that moment my new name was Freddy. The following year he entered the Faculty of Arts of the University of Chile, where the student agitation had restarted after complex years where the repression was brutally violent. Now there were more of us and all the universities were setting up Student Centers ready to fight for student and human rights. They were two hard years, of strikes, street actions, propaganda, and confrontation with the repressive forces-Carabineros de Chile, which at that point was a militarized police force trained for repression-Between art classes, paintings, and struggle, of from time to time some of these poems that I have rescued arose. Others were lost among notebooks or were forgotten on a table in my school.
The months went by one after another; meeting, bells, protests, repression, hiding and reappearing, that’s how the years went by, with a lot of political activity, little appearance, and some verses that are being accommodated in these sheets.
At the beginning of 88, love came with force, since one day in January I met Valezka, who would be the mother of my three beloved daughters. That year, party activity would turn to the campaign for the October plebiscite and find a way to insert myself into the workplace, since by December there would be three of us in the family. It was a tough year for both of us, but we went to all the big marches where we joined the people who had said enough to so many people of darkness and opprobrium. The triumph of the “No” option brought hope for the daughter to come and the verses changed color, approaching a less arid and somber texture. 1989 I arrive with a stable job, my party life is focused on the union. That year Patricio Aylwin was elected, he would be the President “as far as possible”, or put another way: what was impossible for the people, while everything possible was given to the de facto groups and the oligarchy. Those were the years of asking for permission from the dictators and fascists who held key positions in the Armed Forces, Parliament, and the production and communication media. Large state companies continued to be privatized and neoliberalism deepened. From the 90s onwards, were the years of shame, of a protected democracy, and of the deepening of the model
Enrique of Santiago, December 2021
The Smoke Base (1979)
the base of the smoke it is base without eye for the bell a lock vibrates ten times, and the bewildered sight writes How many broken ideas are there in the mirror? for the bell the ear is deaf with pain of 10,000 years the crazy race has an end everywhere lips are pursed, the exit is praised, spitting black earth and the black earth spits us to the sky burning the pupils since the base of the smoke has no eye The base of the smoke has no eye and the ash drowns a siren and they crash by the thousands Well, it’s the autumn of man the bell screams in fright and the eardrum tells him to shut up.. but the cry is crying dog crying, of worms of mice human crying shoes melt and the frost boils in its hour pine is charcoal and the race burns and burns The base of the smoke has no eye but the beginning yes, but underlies its lock
Carnival and duel (1980)
Dreams have been trampled in the mud and the moans are silenced with screens and neon fun to lead the century on the trembling of absent birds but one day the crystal clear rain will come and after the sun with your new water kissed by the moon while the rebellious ligaments they give off longings on the gray asphalt under waiting stars the smooth flight of lepidoptera
The Pedaling (1981)
On a colorless bike pedal to a sleeping atoll in that corner of the skin of a rosy vision under the dark green chair so that the sole kisses the yellow sands the contemporary chip already inside my starry pants I think it is appropriate to say with a red voice: Long live this surreal expression! I then say: Your violet rifle jumps from the dark tides Stepping on the shapes that you don’t have yet and you were submerged in your numerical sea where they surprised you between mastabas and whips and embraced the heavy centuries under the belly of the galleys to cross the maps of the centuries chasing the useless and ephemeral
Night (1983)
Have you felt that the bats They come to your room one day agitated? They laugh and denote expired fangs while the music falls, abandoning each note, and I look for an onomatopoeia to simulate my brain hitting the floor, so as not to perceive how it is extinguished the spent life of those who do not have feathers I just want my fingers intact to pull a certain trigger and make my way through the gray tangle of his name
Observations (1984)
They are cloudy days vermin crawl and abound the palace beasts the city wears its best corruption suit and in each office a crime is perpetrated but there are still your kisses and your moisture in a brief but broad sincerity in that street that corrects my face and faith
Reading in Heaven (1985)
The fly refrained from ascending and stopped at folded hopes perceiving a usual odor had drilled all the diameters known and unknown of the present medieval apathy Repelled by bullets the nonconformity wears black tile and resume the flight causing the last ulcers to existing weight Tomorrow the cage is undressed before the soup gets cold
Painting (1986)
Alone, in front of the support clinging to thousands of flaming voices and be one and all following the thread of Ariadna in that challenging labyrinth where she is shipwrecked and pales her life, next to the truth and hers custodian loves be both and call what principle Without us realizing that we always carry with the fear of what ends
Dream (1987)
In the courtyard of my memory I did not pave stone *pastelones and on the most humid and fertile land grow a red flower burdensome and geometric without the language of capitulation and got up watered with the brief bravery that drives almost irrationally to the martyrs from every barricade in this city charnel house
Demystifying (1987)
The feather vortex perishes before the litigation of stillness and from so much looking for potions on nights covered with the moon shell I then went to the annals of oblivion while the image of the eroded sky appears under the uncertainty of its dim flashes going through the rubble of your memory My withered pupil arrived there to forget you
September Notes (1989)
They will hide my lean meat, under the cover of earth and parallel, where the traces left by my dreams will not be visible in those coordinates where the dragonflies nested In the softest parts of a solstice insistent the consecrated spells will be hidden for future generations while I drink from a larval porphyria since each wing contains the history of time, what takes my breath to set your levels without further limits that the one that extends in the red slope of a fallen where each segment of the man fulfills with the fragility of his own destiny In vain many look at their savings account on the gray sidewalk, when in reality life goes by insignificant before your eyes Now do you understand why? of the sound of crafty sabers in spring
Enrique de Santiago, Born in Santiago, Chile (1961). Visual artist, poet, researcher, essayist, curator and cultural manager. He studied a Bachelor of Art at the University of Chile and at the Institute of Contemporary Art (Chile). Since 1984, he has exhibited in individual and group exhibitions, counting to his credit around more than 100 exhibitions. He has edited five books: Fragile Transits Under the Spirals in 2012, with La Polla Literaria; Elegía a las Magas and the book essay: El Regreso de las Magas, both with Editorial Varonas. In 2018 he edited La Cúspide Uránica with editorial Xaleshem and Dharma Comunicaciones, and Travel Bitácora with Editorial Opalina Cartonera. He has participated in various poetry anthologies, both in Chile and abroad. He has collaborated in the newspaper La Nación with articles on new media art, and in magazines such as Derrame, Escaner Cultural and Labios Menores in Chile, Brumes Blondes in Holland, Adamar from Spain, Punto Seguido from Colombia, Sonámbula from Mexico, Agulha de Brazil, Incomunidade de Portugal, Styxus de Rep. Czech, Canibaal de Valencia, Spain, Materika de Costa Rica and other printed and digital publications.
Mitchell Pluto 