United States of Banana: Burial of the Sardine

There at the Fulton Market—where three roads intersect—was the point where HAMLET, GIANNINA, and ZARATHUSTRA first met. The three had been walking the streets like mad—without stopping to rest—until they came to the South Street Seaport—where flies were harrowing around the halo of the fish market that smelled like the rot of Chinatown. They recognized one another and walked toward each other with dead bodies on their backs.

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: It worked its whole life in the sludge of oil and vinegar. I’ll sprinkle incense, myrrh, and a pound of gold to be buried with it under the Sand.

HAMLET: Hurry up. The ferry will leave without us.

GIANNINA: You have no idea how much I’ve suffered under the influence of this rigorous but retarded sardine. Not a warrior, but a soldier. Making me vow to its regiment of passive-aggressive work. No traveling was allowed. No smoking allowed. No pets allowed. No one could get near me because the sardine would stink—and its stink would bite. Sometimes it would fly around the rim, but it would always dive back into the can of sardines—looking for its paycheck. Every two weeks—it brought me a salary—the stinky sardine—and I brought home all I could buy with that salary—confinement, imprisonment. Depending on a salary made me salivate—but it blew my mind to dust—the dust that blows around and makes you cough—but you hardly can see it because it’s made of dust. But I’m not made of dust—I’m made of flesh—and making love to the little sardine drove me crazy. It was such a little fish it barely filled my mouth. I could hardly eat it. I grew hungry—hungry for a big fish. God help me—no more fish! Please no clams, no oysters! Please—nothing shelled or scaled! Nothing salted—nothing finned or fanged! Because it had fangs—the sardine had fangs—and it bit me like a rabid squirrel. It must have known I wanted to bury it. Its fangs were long—and its screams were shrill— and it held grudges—and it had bones to pick. It blamed me for keeping it down—but all I wanted was its liberation from the can. I wanted it to breathe clean air—and to sing. Your mouth is already open—now take a deep breath, little fishy, and sing—sing a song of love. You know my cords are made of vibrant colors. You know I too come from the sea—but I don’t come with grudges in my fangs. I come with wings to fly from your stink. I hate sardines.

ZARATHUSTRA: Then why do you eat them?

GIANNINA: Because I detest their helplessness. I wouldn’t eat a lion. It would eat me first. I eat what is weaker than me. I like lamb. I watch a grazing lamb, and my mouth waters. I could eat it alive. But not sardines. They’re already dead. They never lived. They’re dead even when they’re alive. Always with their mouths open. Begging for water. And I don’t mind beggars. But sardines are not beggars—they’re squirmers. They beg for water—but what they really want is to eat you alive—with their deadliness—which is a plague—a virus—bacteria—something contagious that kills you without killing you. They open their mouths to beg for water—but do nothing but gulp the draught and wait for water—with their mouths open—as if snoring, which is worse than imploring—they’re beggarly beggars that don’t even beg—they’re too dead to beg—and they’re deadly contagious. It’s their deadliness that lingers over me every day of my life—the dead inertia of the sardine that obeys and begs for water, gallons of water, and does what it’s asked to do in spite of no water and denies itself so much—that it doesn’t realize it doesn’t have a being anymore—and it lets itself be canned—always with its open mouth saying:

—Drop dead, but give me drops of water. I don’t want to be buried alive. I want to survive. I’m a salaried sardine. Give me more  money.

That’s why they’re so salty and ugly, they itch and bite. Because they’re salivating for salty salaries—salty salaried sardines.

ZARATHUSTRA: It is not a sardine. It is a big fish.

GIANNINA: The coffin is small, but the stench is immense. Zarathustra, would you allow my little pet to be buried in the same hole of the hollow tree where you left the tightrope walker?

HAMLET: And may I please leave the putrefied carrion in the same hollow tree?

GIANNINA: We are burying sameness—the aesthetic principle of sameness—the three together—at the same time—holding hands—burying bodies in the same hollow tree—and running free from freedom. Free…

El imperio de los sueños

En el último piso del Empire State se ha parado un pastor a cantar y a bailar. Qué cosa más grande. Que la ciudad de Nueva York haya sido invadida por tantos pastores. Que ya no se trabaja y que sólo se canta y se baila. Y que los periódicos, el New York Times, en titulares, y el Daily News griten: Nueva York. Nueva York. Nueva York. Escúchenlo. Óiganlo en la radio. Y en la televisión. Escuchen el altoparlante. Escúchenlo. Ya han muerto los fantoches. Y el soldadito de plomo. Los pastores han invadido a Nueva York. Han conquistado a Nueva York. Han colonizado a Nueva York. El especial del día en el restaurante más caro de Nueva York es bellota de oro. Es huevo. Es manzana. Es pájaro. Pescado. Melodía. Poesía. Y epigrama. Ya sólo se canta. Ya sólo se baila. Ya sólo se hace lo que nos da la real gana. Lo que nos da la real gana. Lo que nos da la realísma gana.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the top floor of the Empire State a shepherd has stood up to sing and dance. What a wonderful thing. That New York City has been invaded by so many shepherds. That work has stopped and there is only singing and dancing. And that the newspapers—the New York Times, in headlines, and the Daily News—call out: New York. New York. New York. Listen to it. Hear it on the radio. And on television. Listen to the loudspeakers. Listen to it. The buffoons have died. And the little lead soldier. Shepherds have invaded New York. They have conquered New York. They have colonized New York. The special of the day in New York’s most expensive restaurant is golden acorn. It’s an egg. It’s an apple. It’s a bird. Fish. Melody. Poetry. And epigram. Now there is only song. Now there is only dance. Now we do whatever we please. Whatever we please. Whatever we damn well please.

 

Yo-Yo Boing! (a scene from the bilingual edition)

 –The era of the generalist is coming back. The specialist is dated.  The nose specialist, does he consider your eyes, your mouth, your aura, your personality, before he breaks your nose and turns you into another chiguagua.  No, he goes cross-eyed staring at your nose.  Jack of all trades–the specialist diminishes the value of knowing it all, or at least, trying to grasp it all, and adds–Master of none.  Un especialista, just for discerning the details, is not un sabio.  El sabio puede ser un necio.  Mira lo que decía Alcibíades de Sócrates, borracho, en las tabernas, bebiendo vino, con los dientes podridos.  Mistaken for a beggar.  How can a wise man look so base?  Las apariencias engañan.

–No engañan, my darling, confunden. If I say–here, pretzels, here, porn films, here, sexy bodies–then, they will flock to me–looking for cheap thrills, thinking I am another Madonna, but in the middle of my show, I’ll play a trick on them, as they have been playing tricks on me.  Saying it’s great, when it tastes like shit.  I’ll do the opposite.  I’ll dress like a slutty punk, but I’ll give them the real thing, and I don’t mean coke.  I’ll give them poetry.

–What kind of poetry do you write?

–What do you mean?

–I write sonnets, and you?

–I can’t fit life into rhyme scheme.  It would be a straight jacket.  Rhythm is free.  How can I accept rhythms of ancient ages when I’m feeling my own rhythm.  The velocity of cars–the engines of our time–concords, faxes, guns and subways.  The way we talk and the way we commute.  Do we have time to write novels.  What is immortal in a novel is not the form which is long dead, but the context.  And the same with poetry–what is said–that remains, the way we say things, changes.

–Which means, you write blank verse like Neruda.

–No verse.

–Like Rimbaud–or Baudelaire—Little Prose Poems?

Image via Wikipedia

–I do not write little poems.  I write big books.  Which is not to imply that I like everything in them. 

–Then why do you publish them?

–Because it’s not a matter of liking.  Because to tell you the truth, many times, I don’t like myself.  What am I going to do?  Kill myself because I don’t like myself.  No, I exist.  Those poems I do not like function in the whole work.  And they work well.  So, it’s not a matter of liking.  I don’t like my nose, but it exists and it works well.

–You could also get a nose job.

–Why, I can breathe.

–Do you write every day?

–I don’t have something to say everyday.

–I always find something to say.  I have the feeling we are very different poets.  I’m sure Suzana told you that I won a poetry contest at the Poetry Society of America.  It had an environmental theme.  What do you write about?

–I don’t have themes.  I have flavors like Bazooka.  My favorite is the pink one.  I love to suck all the sugar out of the pink one.

–Flavors don’t last, especially Bazooka.  Poetry has a mission and I take my role very seriously.

–So do I.  I want poetry to be a fashion show–to have  a taste of frivolity–savoir faire–a taste of time at its peak–Kenzo, Gigli and Gautier.  I’m more excited by Bergdorf’s windows than the contemporary poetry I’ve read.

–Who have you read?

–I don’t read any of them.

–It shows. You must realize you’re limiting your audience by writing in both languages.  To know a language is to know a culture.  You neither respect one nor the other.

–If I respected languages like you do, I wouldn’t write at all.  El muro de Berlín fue derribado.  Why can’t I do the same.  Desde la torre de Babel, las lenguas han sido siempre una forma de divorciarnos del resto de la humanidad.  Poetry must find ways of breaking distance.  I’m not reducing my audience.  On the contrary, I’m going to have a bigger audience with the common markets–in Europe–in America.  And besides, all languages are dialects that are made to break new grounds.  I feel like Dante, Petrarca and Boccaccio, and I even feel like Garcilaso forging a new language.   

Saludo al nuevo siglo, el siglo del nuevo lenguaje de América, y le digo adiós a la retórica separatista y a los atavismos.

Saluda  al  sol,  araña,

no  seas  rencorosa.  

Un beso,

Giannina Braschi

 

Experimental Spanglish Novel: Yo-Yo Boing!

Spanglish tour de force novel by Puerto Rican author Giannina Braschi.

“When you open Giannina Braschi’s … Yo-Yo Boing! you fall into a millennial rabbit hole reminiscent of the pleasurable chaos of Alice in Wonderland; or perhaps it is a Star Trek worm hole transporting us into the next ‘centuria’. Either way, this multilingual, multi-genre tour-de-force swallows the reader wholly into a world of language, both playful and political, both pop and poetic.”
Adriana Estill (Letras Femeninas)   

“The best demonstration yet of Braschi’s extraordinary virtuosity, her command of many different registers, her dizzying ability to switch between English and Spanish. It is also a very funny novel, a novel of argumentative conversations that cover food, movies, literature, art, the academy, sex, memory, and everyday life. It is a book that should be performed as well as read.”
Jean Franco (Columbia University)

“Yo-Yo Boing! is a perfect illustration of translingual practice.”
Francisco Moreno-Fernández (Instituto Cervantes, Harvard University) 

https://gianninabraschi.com/yo-yo-boing-vanguard-novel/2/

United States of Banana

available at Amazon.com

The United States of America will become the United States of Banana. And Puerto Rico will be the first half-and-half banana republic state incorporated that will secede from the union. Then will come Liberty Island, then Mississippi Burning, Texas BBQ, Kentucky Fried Chicken—all of them—New York Yankees, Jersey Devils—you name it—will want to break apart—and demand a separation—a divorce. Things will not go well for the banana republic when the shackles and chains of democracy break loose and unleash the dogs of war. Separation—divorce—disintegration of subject matters that don’t matter anymore—only verbs—actions. Americans will walk like chickens with their heads cut off.           

Giannina Braschi