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ERIKA BRUZONICK

HIS NAVEL IS AS DEEP AS A

GOD'S EYE

Cluny – Midsomer Norton – New York – La Paz

2009

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© Editorial Yerba Mala Cartonera de Bolivia, 2009.

Proyecto social cultural y comunitario sin fines de lucro.

yerbamalacartonera@gmail.com

http://yerbamalacartonera.blogspot.com

Proyectos análogos: Eloísa Cartonera (Argentina), Sarita Cartonera (Perú),

Ediciones la Cartonera (México), Animita Cartonera (Chile), Dulcinéia

Catadora (Brasil)

______________________________________________________

Impreso en: Imprenta ―Río Seco‖, patio 2, mzno. P, No. 214, El Alto.

Derechos exclusivos en Bolivia

Hecho el depósito legal: 3-1-1101-09

Impreso en Bolivia

______________________________________________________

Esta publicación ha sido posible gracias al apoyo desinteresado del club de

cuento “Pan de batalla”, la Sra. María Campos y el mArtadero.

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FOREWORD

By Heather Lydia Joffe

U.S. stage actor and stage writer, traveller, wordsmith,

number–cruncher.

is a book to be read first in bed, then on the bus, now in the

park. Bruzonic gives us 26 of them, like haikus but not, to be

gobbled up or savoured one at a time, slowly, with lemonade on

the porch under the afternoon sun, or by night with a glass of

red wine against the cold.This is a book of concise images that

pack a punch:

His navel is deep as a god’s eye when he sleeps… God, she

cannot be humble with the wealth of him beside her!

Twenty reflections go down smooth with their sensual talk

of longing, of honey and plums, shoulders and hips. But twenty

reflections that leave an aftertaste of longing, that tug at the

corners of mind and heart, with their talk of the things that

matter to us, the things we seek and turn from – love and

solitude, homecoming and travel, and throughout all of it,

choice. Bruzonic there are those of us who live by our choices

and those who live by convention —the author leaves us with

no doubt as to where she falls.

And throughout, we dance or stumble around the headlong,

tentative, ineffable human connections, which Bruzonic sums

up with an off-handed wisdom:

…remembering, however, when we could kiss, though with

a cold, love even with our clothes on… yes, and everything I

cooked tasted delicious and everything you did was wonderful.

These are tales that provoke saudade, the unique

Portuguese longing things lost and things we never had, can

only imagine, but that seem nevertheless as familiar as a well-

worn fantasy.

Paz, Bolivia, February 2009

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ABOUT CHOICES

I travel and travel. I pack and unpack valises. I wake up in

familiar yet strange hotel rooms. I go to work and see four or

five different towns and villages in the course of a day. I work

in different cities. I arrange to fly home to my life. I wait

resignedly for delayed planes. I answer my mails and write new

ones. I pay my bills and await next month‘s. I worry about time

and count the days until I am back home. Am I a human being

only through my work? Maybe it‘s a midlife question and just a

matter of choice. I know less every time, but that‘s just because

of all the questions I pose myself. Would I like to get to the end

of life and answer as to what I did: ―I wrote‖? Would it be a

better answer: ―I was mystified, mesmerised and ultimately

joyous‖? Bloody hell, it‘s all about choices.

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‘CAUSE I’M A WANDERER

Yes, I am a wanderer. I like to delude myself into thinking I‘ve

grown roots. I do that a lot, you see. I like to believe I am ready

to settle down, to have a dog and a picket fence. And then,

wham! Off I go to either the Antarctic or the proud Midsomer

Norton where I‘ve found a niche.

At times I fall in love with a dream, but it never lasts. How

does the song go? Gossamer, that‘s the stuff dreams are made

of. The beauty, though, of being a wanderer is that I get to feel

the wind and the sun on my pale face. I get to smell the

fragrance of grass and trees and bushes. I get to feel the rocks

and pebbles under my feet and the earth I walk on touches my

skin. And my life changes all over.

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FEVERISH

At times we do things like in a fever. Yes, when absolutely

nothing, nothing fits, mind into body, soul into another soul...

when nothing equals anything. Oh, how our perceptions lie and

go haywire!

It was an alien sense with which my hands embraced him and

searched every bit of him to find love —if at all it lay

somewhere hiding! I closed my eyes to imagine you —but the

rehearsed body did not ratify the mind‘s clouding.

The exciting musk with which love wraps itself... damn, it‘s

thwarted my imagination. His love, too, was centered and intent,

I do not think it reached his forehead; it did not even reach his

throat as your love reaches your blue eyes and your superb

smile in my dreams, or in my half-hours with you day after day

after day; and it fills the room, and it spreads all over the

ceiling, and it spans the years —your seventy–three against my

third of a century plus— and holds hands with beast and god.

He met me, but unlike you did. I can never stay with him —for

my heart being yours cannot release blood to love somebody

other than you.

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ETTA JONES OR A FUNNY LITTLE TALE

I fly home for the Carnival holidays. I am curious about

nightlife in a place where I only enjoy daytime. My companion

is new —all too new. He wants to know the same things others

do too. Do I believe in marriage? What‘s it like working in

Bolivia? Do I have political interests? Why do I live alone?

What is it that I want in my career? Those questions already

overemphasize our differences, I can tell.

We walk… and suddenly she joins us. Her name is Etta, wife

of John Medlock, and she goes by her maiden name: Jones. She,

a jazz diva, sings and I absorb smells… sights… colours. Dark

little pubs and people different from me. In the almost absolute

darkness, in the middle of smoke and her loud precious voice,

people meet and part. I can see their need to touch. I can feel

their need to be touched. Etta sees and touches me.

It is early morning, and we walk along the river to reach my

home a little sooner. I can smell winter, at least six more weeks

of it. My companion is still new despite the long night we‘ve

shared. He takes my arm and we continue to walk, the echoes of

the one and only Etta clear in my brain and soul… and my free

arm feels the emptiness of someone other beside me.

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GHOSTS

This is a recurrent dream. It is a drama. It is about people who

never live by their choices, and they are —oh, so bound by the

conformity of conventions! In the dream I rage against them.

Rage is my leit motif. I tear, I break, I beat, I rave, I destroy.

When I wake up, I know I have both the knowledge and

experience that have been fruitful throughout my years of

discovery. Rage is no longer useful while I am awake.

Hmmm. Someone once wished me loneliness. I believe her

petty curse was never meant to be. I have had years of solitude,

and I have grown wiser though never daring to verbalise what I

have understood. I have hidden behind masks instead. I have

created ghosts while trying to expunge them. For many years

now, death has invaded my life. It is a force, pulsating as blood

drains the body and ebbs forever. All of my beloveds have left.

Yes, I am alone, but I am never lonely. No, roles do not change

me. Only life does, stronger than ever.

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KISSES

I am listening to the Shakespeare in Love film soundtrack; I

am quite the film soundtracks collector. The Prologue is

playing. This is a quiet morning and, after all, I am supposed to

be writing. Shouldn‘t I finish a book by this year–end? But, as

the world gathers momentum toward nihilation everywhere,

everyday, don‘t we all walk apart? Off we go, to our own end...

not joining hands as friends, relations and lovers walk.

I would be happier to enter time‘s endless pages with a kiss

glowing like a halo over me than in the company of Christs or

Dantes, Halley comets or the Orion constellation!

It‘s like this —oh, so simple: look this way, give someone

your hand —that the ones on the other side may see and say:

The last we saw of them was when they kissed, and then the one

next to them kissed the one next to him, then lovingly walked

ahead as if into the bright starry sky —leaving their bodies like

useless clothes upon the earth.

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PERSONAL, NOT PRIVATE

He has known her for seventeen years give or take a few

months, but he knew her eyes by heart after the very first look.

Without seeing her photo he could repeat them in detail: from

the dark line that surrounds the smoky irises to the small dark

pupils that often focus on each and every thing with the same

hopeful interest. He learned her hair many ways… visually and

by the Braille touch. He is the only man allowed to run his

fingers through her hair while she goes to sleep. After a single

attempt only he could cup his hands just so —as if they held her

warm oval face. Blindfolded, he could kiss a million mouths and

know her lips. He could tell seasons by her mouth‘s kisses, feel

the colours, taste the ripe summer passion fruits… and learn the

months of the year. He took her body like a cup of warm spicy

wine at wintertime. She was all he and all of him was she —

their senses rhymed, as all things absolute. Now that she is gone

(again) he feels he never knew her —and the thought fills him

with mild restlessness... like the onset of anger.

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SIMON

I alter nothing. This is he in dark–grey lead, on a plain white

screen. No flattering technicolour. No accompaniment in major

key. He has lived next door for the past three years and only

Saturday has she acknowledged his existence.

Just sit as you are, or stand… and do whatever you‘re doing,

while the digital eye winks you into permanence. Just turn the

last flight of stairway as I open the door —and say "hullo". He

is a natural director.

You see this needs no retouching. The colours are natural and

the shape is universal. He will not forget this weekend… and

neither will she.

Leonard Cohen‘s Hallelujah followed them through forty–

eight hours, and made them close. Closer. Closest. Today he

said: ―I have looked too long upon you, too long… so long that

strangers can see you in my face.‖

Her heart pressed against her lungs after she heard his soft–

vowelled words. She couldn‘t breathe; it rose to her throat and

throttled her words. Why —people stared at her as she strode

towards the airline counter. Were her eyes too bright? Was her

head too high? Or did it really show, that kiss —did it sit on her

lips for everyone to see, as if instead of lips she had a ripe open

fig on her mouth?

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MALLARDS

Why am I looking around like this?

Only because I want to remember this, all this… the tall

stained glasses and the uneven leg of the bar stool, the napkins

we crumpled, the spilled beer, the smell of cod… people going

out for and coming in after a fag, and the way the deejay eggs

the dancers on to exaggerate their mating gestures. The scattered

showers and the windy spells. It‘s cold outside, and it's late but

it's still Friday. No hurry. We've hours.

Hey, pub keeper… isn‘t it about time we had a pint on the

house?

I want to remember this always, everywhere… at home or on a

plane, asleep or awake. Yes —I know. Late Friday nights here

always leave an after–image in the eyes.

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HOME

How long… how long can she live this night! Look… the

clouds shine —how did it happen? The wind is strong, the rain

is beautiful —what have they done to the wind, and the rain, and

the clouds?

And to her?

See, she is drunk; high… she is high on rain as on a reefer!

She is happy she's had everything she loves —shellfish and

capers… watercress, black olives. Wine, coffee and cream.

Smoked cheese, prosciutto, plums in Armagnac. She bought

velvety roses that were almost black from a street florist and

placed them where she could see them. She lit the table and

filled the glasses… shared her memories of many years with a

light heart, lots of laughter and warm, warm replies.

Later, the half–moon rose. Everywhere the windows falling

dark. Her room is somewhat lit with moonlight. She is home.

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SLEEP LATE, DEAR

(Summer of '08)

Nobody cares if it‘s early or not. It is Sunday, and it is

morning. And they are having coffee in bed… then coffee–

flavoured kisses. And his tongue drips brown sugar, yes —it

does. Last night she has watched him breathe when asleep. His

navel is deep as a god‘s eye when he sleeps. Nothing more,

nothing less. Hair, all over him, agrees in colour completely. He

is brown and soft to look at like a nest of field mice. God, she

cannot be humble with the wealth of him beside her!

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L’AMOUR L’APRES–MIDI

A borrowed title, but so what. This is how the sun rose over

the Club: the high horizon paled; cloud-fragments pinkened, and

the grey ledges refracted the white, raying out like a

resurrection. The height of the Club later appeared the sun. It's

morning allright.

How it set is altogether different: all day it slunk along about a

wizard‘s height when suddenly it dropped out of sight

somewhere in the neighbouring hills, beyond the River. The sky

was almost green behind clouds dyed purple and plums.

Then I remembered… your loved plums. And although

eighteen years have gone by you are still the same, looking

gorgeous in the afternoon, as you always do after love.

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WHO OWNS THE EARTH?

Where shall the weary rest? When shall the lonely of heart

come home? What doors are open for the wanderer? Questions

unanswered, all of them, and they oscillate perpetually between

two poles.

I have found that it need not be so. All answers come most

easy, see: when a star falls I shall wish for you. When the moon

is full, I shall wish for you. When a blackbird flies across my

path, when a maple leaf turns yellow before my eyes, when I

find rosemary in flower —I shall wish for you.

And when the southern winter lays out her richest colours…

her luminous gold, ripe red, warm beige and brown all over the

mountains surrounding the city, like a woman slowly undressing

—I shall look for you.

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DEBÍ DECIR TE AMO

I should have said it… because hate is legislated. I should have

said it before Gelman wrote it. I should have. For the clock–

hand turns and timeless night draws us in totally —without a

rain check, a key to heaven, or even a last deep look. For only

yes can turn the cards. For love has always had your face, even

before I knew it. For my memory, in technicolour, will never be

free of you. For your eyes are my home, and your voice the

circle I cannot leave, however far I go.

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LET ME TELL YOU HOW YOU LOOK

Many people see you in similes: his full body, colours summer

has. Oh, how you please… you please like a hash dream does.

Or you walk like an emperor courted. I see you best unrelated,

with not a metaphor to your name: your hair not like willowy

dark cascades but like your hair, your mouth resembling nothing

so wonderfully much as your own mouth. Similes are but a

fraction of you —a slide. I mean… praise becomes you as snow

becomes a tall snow covered mountain in a line of mountains

dripping with deep trickling snow.

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NO STARS

None tonight to get her bearing by. She does not know what

time it is. Or what year. Or what season. The sky sags… bellies.

The city gargles dust in the streets.

She is lost in a house somewhere between two chains of

mountains. Blind buildings are all around her— and the earth is

covered with flat stones. Over her, a dark roof protects her from

the belchings of many chimneys. This is also home.

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SIGNALS

As he sits, knees high, the darkness accentuating the meeting

of his thighs, like dark grass grown in the richest soil… he is

wonderfully eloquent.

Articulate eyes wink from his chest and belly, signal from his

throat —beckon from his thighs, and his multidimensional

shoulders.

Yes, his body makes eyes at her from every salient —how it

promises her warm, lavish promises! They are curved, in colour,

finished in warmth, like puppies.

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‘ROUND MIDNIGHT

‗Tis the finest hour. There in the jungle night, a stark naked

god slipped between them and the lightning struck —and in the

light she saw him, he was lovelier by many years than

yesterday. She was taking ravenous swollen kisses from his

brimming mouth. His lips cushioned the inherent murder in his

teeth. Her body grew to fit his body —and those open limbs of

hers were flaming, full… and making honey.

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NIGHTMARES

Last night I dreamed of a house unknown. For a while I could

not enter, for the way was barred to me and to me only. Nobody

was around to open it for me. It was padlocked and chained.

Then, like all dreamers, I was suddenly possessed with

supernatural powers and entered the house as a spirit would.

There was Little Brook and there was the Park Millennium and

I did not know what to make of it.

Moonlight can play odd tricks upon the fancy, even upon a

dreamer‘s fancy. O —the rooms in both places will bear witness

to our presence. But, you see, they were ruins. The places were

sepulchres, and our fears lay buried in the remains. There would

be no resurrection and the illusion would fade with the cloud

covering the moon, hovering like a dark hand before a face.

When I thought of it, however, I would not be bitter.

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LEAVING LITTLE LONDON

Her heart bulges —her heart presses against her throat, she

cannot breathe; it rises to her mouth and muffles her words—

Little Brook welcomes her, but it is not the same. Not at all the

same. She will forever remember how the sun rose over the hilly

side of Little London: the horizon paled, it inched upwards like

a strip dancer lifting her tassels to show her white breasts.

The new house has plum fields and apple blossoms, abundant

with soft colours that sweeten the air.

Later in the week she will recall them and sigh because the

glittering pile, Manhattan, swarms like an uncovered waste

heap. From a distance she sees her building and the thick iron

fence surrounding it. The look of it is mouldy though with

moonlight. She is tired.

He calls her in and she is tired no more.

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DESPAIR

They seem to be entering their bed through opposite doors

these days. Yes, hours they lie awake, each in their own end,

entrenched.

She knows he wondered where she‘d been the day before, but

she'd only thought of him fleetingly while leaving the door ajar

to let a new man in for a few hours.

Today she feels she‘s fully torn the rainbows off his eyes.

And she is sorry —sorry and wrong for all the love she may

have found in others.

What else not having him can mean to her?

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SIMON II

The slow moving darkness engulfs the city, and invites it to

dream violence. Here were the nights are deep as clear deep

water, and the sky is no longer famous for spawning stars in

abundance.

She is away from the world she lived in —the streets they

walked together and the roofs they used to climb to amuse

themselves. The doors they entered and the bed they loved on.

Far from the late winter mornings… the walks under the elms,

and the pub where they played truant. She watches the season

go —with him, the winter close, and the year's end draw closer,

and the world's…

It is so strange, this her need of him.

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PLEASE MOVE NEARER ME

The golden iridescent sky covers us; the fiery noon allows the

sun to pour onto us, and the Earth alike.

The trees smell sweetly as your flanks and thighs do in the

morning. Somewhere there is a clock timing us… so —come

love me because the sun is kissing us beyond red, not with

lover‘s lips, but with vampire‘s fangs.

Yes, you say. Our lips part and fill out and meet and burn. Yes,

you say. Yes is a nightingale in your voice —and in your arms

and legs yes is a squid pulling me in ten different directions. I

am so alive under your kisses that I tremble against you.

Love will flow like yellow honey on a tongue; let it drip upon

us —yes, let it live… as we contemplate a new generation of

you and me.

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PARTING

When our new interests, our accumulated riches, our fuller

lives…

require quotes to validate their meanings: and however hard

we try we won‘t be able to exploit our grievances further to

fortify our exhausted resolutions— What will we do to keep the

mad boarder sulking in the brain?

When we have forgotten why we left each other —not that we

ever knew it at all; remembering, however, when we could kiss,

though with a cold, love even with our clothes on, when even

funny faces became you… yes, and everything I cooked tasted

delicious and everything you did was wonderful.

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ENCOUNTER

You did come. And we crossed the street holding hands. We

rode the underground and sat touching —there was no distance

between us. And the white–haired lady looked at us in

disapproval.

You spoke, and I filled my ears with you. I looked at you, and

you filled all of your five senses with my eyes. I stayed near

you… and you filled your lungs with me.

You came home with me… and I filled my arms and legs with

you. I could see only you, and undid your shirt and your tie

about your throat. My lips touched your shoulders and torso,

your waist and your hips, and the wealth of you that is planted

in warm spring soil.

Darling, come home with me…

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NOTHING TO CHANGE ABOUT YOU

Were I any god at all —even Pygmalion, I would make you

exactly as you are. In every way. From your soft hair to your

toenails would you be wholly in your own image. I would

change absolutely nothing… add or take away or substitute.

From the same seaside would I bring the small pearly shape of

your ears. I love your ears; my lips whisper tender nothings and

they become translucent after listening to me. If only I could

duplicate your lovely throat! Your long tender arms! I would

shape your forehead the shape of the hungry expression it has

before love, and reshape your lips with hundreds of little avid

movements, and tip them with the same quick feel.

I would not make your eyes lovelier than they are —nor more

suave to look into… nor could I turn your belly in a fuller

hollow curve, nor indent the hollows of your thighs more

lovingly… or store more fire there. Need you ask how I would

name you?

You know.

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YES

Yes is a hummingbird inside your throat —and under your

arms yes is sweeter than cool coconut milk on a sunny morning.

In your mouth yes is fresh mint leaves crushed in the palm of

my hand, and yes are your naked thighs.

Yes is your long neck under my kisses.

Yes is the sun kissing us brown with furious lover‘s lips.

Come, love me.

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HOW I MISS YOU

This is how it was yesterday at noon: I watched bright ripe

melon meat and —yes, even now, though remembered only… I

was taking brimming kisses from your mouth. How they

enslaved me barely a month ago!

I blink hard behind my shades —why must I see you in every

man that passes by?

You know I will recall your body, and your fingers trailing

down my hips, there in the darkness of firs and larches topping

the eerie mountain passes. Come home to me…

No —I shall go home to you; I shall —when the summer's

here.

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REFLECTIONS OF A THUMPING HEART

He tasted death today, incipiently. His heart started jumping a

mile a minute and it seemed it would stop with no warning: it

wished to stop. Fear set in for a fraction of a second and then it

was gone. He accepted an imminent end that wasn‘t after all.

Was it the absence of fear what connected him back to life? Is

he supposed to be afraid while dying, or in order to die?

His heart resumed its normal rhythm after giving him a sample

of what is to come. So, death is closer as expected.

Why then doesn't he crave life? In films, the dying hero goes

in search of mad wild life under the sun, in the rain, above

water, inside the earth, over the moon, all the while

experiencing the need to get all his loving and laughing and

crying done as soon as he can.

He isn't needy, though.

Well, what do you know —dying is beautiful.

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ENCORE

VIVRE UN PEU

Calme calme reste calme. Comme une comptine absurde le

vers bourdonne dans ma tête. Hmmm… il est si facile d‘être

placide et naturelle... Décembre est venu, l‘odeur de la pluie à la

place de celle de poussière, les corps avec ombre à midi.

"Le lac est si beau maintenant", disait quelqu'un l'autre jour.

Hier, j'ai y été. Le lac, je l'aime toujours autant, mais je m'en

veux parce que son grand vent ne me plaît plus. Avant j'adorais

le tempêtes, les formes terribles et vagues. Celles qui étaient des

lions rampants.

Maintenant c‘est la vie d‘en dessous qui m‘attire. Les couleurs

qui changent selon les fonds. J‘imagine des histoires

fantastiques comme Poe et son The City in the Sea: Lo! Death

has reared himself a throne, in a strange city lying alone, far

down within the dim West, where the good and the bad have

gone to their eternal rest. There, shrines and palaces and

towers, time-eaten towers that tremble not, resemble nothing

that is ours… Au moment de l'aube, l'image est en moi, mais je

n'ai pas l'intention de raconter.

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Ediciones Yerba Mala Cartonera

Para no desesperar en las trancaderas, para dejar pasar las

propagandas de la TV, para aguantar las marchas, para caminar subidas sin darse cuenta, para bailar al ritmo de la

cumbia del minibús o para cuando tengas simplemente ganas de leer. Un libro cartonero, casero, tu mejor cómplice.

Otros títulos: Crispín Portugal, Almha, la vengadora

Gabriel Pantoja, Plenilunio Vadik Barrón, iPoem

Bruno Morales, Bolivia Construcciones Carolina León, Las mujeres invisibles

Yancarla Quiroz, Imágenes Rodrigo Hasbún, Familia y otros cuentos

Claudia Michel, Juego de ensarte Juan Pablo Piñeiro, El bolero triunfal de Sara

Jessica Freudenthal, Poemas ocultos Beto Cáceres, Línea 257

Darío Manuel Luna, Khari-khari Gabriel Llanos, Sobre muertos y muy vivos

Santiago Roncagliolo, El arte nazi Fernando Iwasaki, Mi poncho es un kimono flamenco

Nicolás Recoaro, 27.182.414 Marco Montellano, Narciso tiene tos

Vicky Aillón, Liberalia Banesa Morales, Memorias de una samaritana

Washington Cucurto, Mi ticki cumbiantera Crispín Portugal, !Cago pues!

Nelson Van Jaliri, Los poemas de mi hermanito