Nothing knew

Your body

And yet,

It changed the rhythm

Of the waves.

Mariela Cordero, a poetess from Valencia, Venezuela, shares her poetry

Mariela Cordero, hailing from Valencia, Venezuela, born in 1985, is a lawyer, poet, writer, translator and visual artist. Her poetry has been published in several international anthologies. She has received some distinctions, including Third Prize of Poetry Alejandra Pizarnik Argentina (2014), First Prize of the II Iberoamerican Poetry Contest Euler Granda, Ecuador (2015), Second Prize of Poetry Concorso Letterario Internazionale Bilingüe Tracceperlameta Edizioni, Italy (2015) and many other awards. She has published the collections of poems. She has participated in several international literary meetings and festivals, among them: The Princeton Festival United States), Festival Internacional de Poesía Parque Chas (Argentina), Festival Internacional Bitola Memoria Literaria, Festival Internacional de Poesía Xochimilco (Mexico), X Festival Iberoamericano de Fusagusagá (Colombia) 2023 Kaohsiung World Poetry Festival (Taiwan). Her poems have been translated into Hindi, Czech, Estonian, Serbian, Shona, Uzbek, Romanian, Macedonian, Korean, Hebrew, Bengali, English, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Polish. She currently coordinates the sections #VenezuelanPoetry and #WorldPoetry in the Poetry Magazine Poémame (Spain).

Venezuela

Nothing knew your body

The moon emerged in a sky

Barely divisible

From the dark waters.

Its appearance

Agitated the bowels of the ocean.

A name began

To be murmured

Hidden

In the murmur of the waves

Nothing knew

Your body lying on the sand,

Near the shore

Being brushed by the salty humidity.

Nothing knew

Your body

And yet,

It changed the rhythm

Of the waves.

***

Caracas

You once followed the course of the packs

You once followed the course of the packs

Guided by that smell of furrows

Possessed by the dizziness that was spilling

Above the crowd

You learned to bite

And to dismember as the others.

You drank the revelation water late.

You killed your own in the dark.

You were part

Of the weakness that you devoured

You were

The prey.

***

Street in Valencia – Wikipedia photo

The inscrutable eyes

The inscrutable eyes 

That hide

Within galloping cities of steel, 

Are behind 

Thousands of other sleepwalking eyes. 

They are indomitable narcotics

That mutilate the helplessness

Soothe the screams

And pour out caresses.

When they emerge

They take you by assault.

You know 

That you will die

Invoking them.

***

Indigenous Venezuelans – Photo courtesy: UNHCR

The sensed features

All the faces go astray 

On the journey, 

The hungry memory

Aspires to retain them

But the traces and signs

Are diluted in the tide of bewilderment.

In the crowd blooms

Immediate

Like a blow

A unique face

Unknown

That imposes itself

And unsettles you

Until you are pierced

By the fulminating joy 

Of ending the search.  

The beloved face

Gathers

All the sensed features

________________________ 

Published under International Cooperation with "Sindh Courier"