Empire of Dreams [excerpt]

1953 –

translated by Tess O'Dwyer

I love hiccups and I love sneezes and I love blinks and I love belches and I love gluttons. I love hair. I love bears. For me, the round. For me, the world. Round is the happy face. And round is the midday. And when the moon is most beautiful is when it’s round. Sex is round. And the heart also. The hand is round. The mouth also. Sneezes are round. And hiccups also. The milk from the breast of Lady Macbeth was also round. I would have liked to be like her and be bad. I am good. I am Bacchus. I am sex. And I am hiccup. And I am sneeze. And I am cough. Hoarse. Hoarse. Hoarse. I am thunder. I am voice. I am obscene. Obscene. Obscene. I am pure like the tit or the milk. I am water, sea, or fish, or tadpole. I am round.

Burial of the Sardine

Giannina: I’m burying the sardine—the dead body I carry on my back.

Zarathustra: A little fish—in a little coffin. And for this—for this little stinky
thing—we came from so far?

Giannina: Look, it’s moving. It’s still alive.

Zarathustra: It’s so salty and ugly it itches and bites.

Giannina Braschi

2001

Tongue Machine

I’m in exile from the mother tongue—in exile from the foreign tongue—in
exile from all the tongues that wag with the familiarity of knowing—with the
credibility and the certainty—and without any kind of doubt that this is their
town and country. I laugh out loud—and my laughter is as mother tongue
as any laughter in any foreign tongue—but the joke is on me—because my

Giannina Braschi

2001

Poems

Empire of Dreams [excerpt]

More by this poet

Burial of the Sardine

September 11

Tongue Machine

Poems

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Empire of Dreams [excerpt]

More by this poet

Burial of the Sardine

September 11

Tongue Machine

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