Three Poems
The welder
brings his eyes closer to the sparks that the torch unleashes
it unleashes electricity unleashes ghosts
scares off the birds that take refuge on the antennas
a building is a liquid an impulse a business
an urge to adorn the sky with a bunch of windows
to swim in a swamp
convinced that cement will give me more stability
one flush will fill the pool with water
children will fill it with their little giggles and leaps
water they keep pumping so it never runs out
they speak in generalities in monosyllables
linguistic economy
they are onomatopoetic corrosive liminal
it’s the convenience it’s the sun
like the first explorers gazing at a continent
they change the names of things and sort them in groups
El soldador
acerca sus ojos a las chispas que libera la pistola
libera electricidad libera fantasmas
espanta a las aves que se refugian sobre las antenas
una construcción es un fluido un impulso un negocio
una necesidad de adornar el cielo con muchas ventanas
nadar en un pantano
segura de que el cemento me dará estabilidad
una descarga hará que el agua llene la piscina
los niños la llenarán de sus risitas con sus saltos
el agua que bombean para que nunca se acabe
hablan en generalidades en monosílabos
economía del lenguaje
son onomatopéyicos corrosivos liminales
es la comodidad es el sol
como el primer cronista al mirar un continente
le cambian de nombre a las cosas las reúnen en grupos
In the complaint log
write: fences
on second thought scratch that
if the situation spirals out of control we’ll electrify them
in their place
we’ll grow something more hardy more cruel more immense
but above all we’ll plant trees
to maintain the distance
tourist attractions and special exhibits
note: Mortgages and Loans
everything will be registered as water shortage
kids playing ball on the other side
and a tailings pond that will glow at night
a long bureaucratic process
isn’t enough to explain why
we can only see without touching without wanting without having
we cut down a forest and the smoke
will fit on the postcard
we also have to take care of those who will pay
with their lives for this land
those words join together to say things we’ll never
understand
taxes speeches presidents
their hierarchies of exiles and little boots for moving on
En el cuaderno de quejas
apunte: cercos
mejor bórrelo
si la situación se sale de control los electrificamos
en su lugar
hacemos crecer algo más duro más cruel más alto
pero sobre todo plantaremos árboles
para mantener la distancia
obras turísticas y exposiciones
anote: Hipotecas y Préstamos
todo quedará registrado como falta de agua
niños jugando pelota del otro lado
y un relave que brillará por las noches
un largo procedimiento burocrático
no basta para explicar por qué
solo podemos mirar sin tocar sin desear sin tener
talamos un bosque y el humo
se acomodará en la postal
también nos haremos cargo de los que pagarán
con su vida esta tierra
aquellas palabras se reúnen a decir cosas que jamás
entenderemos
los impuestos los discursos los presidentes
sus jerarquías de exilios y botitas para marchar
Everyone asks what I did to get this scar
a scar in the lung is a story that repeats itself
a certain way of cutting your bangs leaves a scar on the forehead
it’s a style
it ought to be profitable
a trendy brand leaves scars on the hands of small children
who hem and stitch very stylish dresses
a scar is not inherited nor stolen
I saw my DNA
in itself our birth is a scar that the earth covers up
with patches of grass
over time a mining company built exploration outposts
to prune and fence off whatever grows too much
dig into your ancestry to get to the bottom of your scar
among the bones I assemble into a fossil there is a ravine
and legions of people who travel on foot who hide the scar
of the master
others
cannot obtain a health certificate
and wander the world stateless
like a scar
demanding that someone pay
a scar is like an eye
that was covered with mud and you keep digging until you arrive at the seed
a birth a forced labor
is a hole in the lung and you fall
a window to gaze through and you fall silent
while those who get tigers tattooed on their arms
or a goddess who spreads her wings
or the name of a lover that ages with the skin
and you can’t erase it
we assume they know what they want
and their bodies will speak
by means of what is now a permanent scar
and from the love that remains forever on the skin
with a scar on your lung
you’re always aware that whatever seeps through the drain
will never come off
which is to say that if everything rots
let it go down the drain
life is filling out
forms that are used for filling out other
forms and other ones
until you feel like
take it or leave it
your money or your life
I’ll make you an offer you can’t refuse
they come to the health center to pick up
one banana and their 11 pills
Todos preguntan qué hice para tener esa cicatriz
una cicatriz en el pulmón es una historia que se repite
un modo de cortarse el flequillo deja una cicatriz en la frente
es un estilo
debe ser rentable
una marca de moda dejó cicatrices en las manos de los niños que
remallan vestidos con mucho estilo
una cicatriz no se hereda no se hurta
vi mi ADN
en sí el nacimiento es una cicatriz que la tierra cubre
de yerba
con el tiempo una empresa minera instaló campamentos de exploración
para podar y cercar lo que creció de más
excava en tus antepasados llega al fondo de tu cicatriz
entre los huesos que armo hasta llegar al fósil hay una quebrada
legiones que van a pie que esconden la cicatriz
del amo
otros
no pueden obtener un certificado de salud
y andan por el mundo apátridas
como una cicatriz
exigiendo que alguien pague
una cicatriz es como un ojo
que se tapió de barro y cavas hasta llegar a la semilla
un nacimiento un parto a la fuerza
es un hueco en el pulmón y te caes
una ventana para mirar y te callas
mientras los que se tatúan tigres en los brazos
o una diosa que levanta las alas
o el nombre de un amor que envejece con la piel
y no lo puedes borrar
suponemos que saben lo que quieren
y sus cuerpos hablarán
a través de lo que ahora es una cicatriz
y del amor que ha quedado por siempre en la piel
con una cicatriz en el pulmón
quedas pendiente de lo que se filtra por la alcantarilla
no sale con nada
al punto de decir que si todo se pudre
que se vaya por la alcantarilla
la vida es rellenar
formularios que sirven para rellenar otros
formularios y otros
hasta sentir
el toma que te quito
y dame o si no hay más
y el págame que si no te mato
vienen al centro de salud a recoger
un plátano y sus 11 pastillas
Translator’s Note
Peruvian poet Roxana Crisólogo was born in 1966 in one of the dozens of informal neighborhoods that sprang up on the periphery of Lima in the 1960s. Like millions of other Peruvians, her parents migrated to the capital in search of better economic conditions and educational opportunities. Her father’s family had been rooted for generations in the Indigenous community of San Juan de Yanac in northern Peru. The profound love and respect that her parents had for the natural world was a critical influence on Crisólogo’s upbringing. So too were their annual family journeys back to the village every June for the feast of San Juan, which honors the fertility of the earth, light, and water.
In Lima, Crisólogo and her family faced a climate of discrimination and racism. The culture, rituals, clothing, music, languages, and even hairstyles of her community were deemed inferior in the schools and institutions of the city. This ingrained elitism shaped Crisólogo in her formative years. From a young age she found herself wondering why some things were considered beautiful while others were considered ugly, why some people had money and others did not. She wanted to understand the origins of these judgements and disparities. Such persistent questioning eventually led Crisólogo toward an education in law, political activism, and a search for poetry that was spacious and strange enough to take an unflinching look at the unseen connections among power, language, and authoritarian violence.
In 1996, at a time of political turmoil and repression in Peru, Crisólogo moved to Finland where she lived for three decades—writing, publishing, and establishing herself as an important voice in Latin American literature. She travelled back and forth to Lima when she could afford it. Her diasporic life in Northern Europe had an indelible effect on her creative practice, intensifying her concern with the racism and structural inequality embedded in global capitalism. Accustomed to living in a densely populated desert city—overflowing with vitality, contradiction, and noise—Crisólogo also struggled to adjust to Finland’s Nordic climate and more reserved social conventions—especially as an immigrant. The slow formation of a new hybridized North-South identity, with all its inherent tensions, gave rise to innovative poetic techniques in Crisólogo’s work; her poems became ground zero for friction and edges that she preferred to sharpen, rather than sand down with inauthentic resolutions.
On June 2, 2000, several villages in Cajamarca, including her father’s village, were contaminated by a devastating mercury spill caused by the Yanacocha mining company. This incident sparked a powerful and well-organized grassroots struggle against the mining companies. Crisólogo became more involved in the environmental movement, attending marches and writing more explicitly about the connections that run between capitalism, racism, and environmental destruction. In many ways the story of the mercury spill and its aftermath provides a helpful lens through which to approach her work which unflinchingly portrays the extremities of loss and bitterness, while still positing the necessity of resistance against each new generation of corrupt politicians and leaders.
The brief selection of her poetry in The Dodge includes a poem (“Everyone asks what I did to get this scar”) inspired by Crisólogo’s battle with tuberculosis as a young woman that left her with permanent damage to her lung. She begins the text on a personal note, but quickly expands the scope to include issues of labor, migration, ancestry, bureaucracy, and forms of exclusion. “A scar is a record of vulnerability, survival, and social conditions,” Crisólogo writes. “The body carries not only personal histories but also the traces of larger systems of inequality.” Whether she is observing the construction of an appalling high-rise building on the edge of a beach in Barranquilla, Colombia (“The welder”) or deconstructing bureaucratic discourses of “progress” that deliberately obscure the systematic destruction of ecosystems (“In the complaint log”), Crisólogo’s poetry is a poetry of crisis. She has invented forms that are capacious enough to hold incongruities and unresolved contradictions, and that are sturdy enough to hold fire without burning, floodwaters without getting wet, and toxic petrochemicals without melting out the bottom of the poem.
As her English-language translator, I’ve learned to decode and recode these poems by listening intently to the quiet pulse of both blood and language that wends its way beneath the skin and surface of her work, beneath the jarring and seemingly unrelated images, beneath the rebellious grammar and syntax. Such blood is always the blood of loss, the heartbreak of a woman watching her whole world go up in flames, but who cannot stop taking notes on everything, most especially the arsonists’ empty prattle in the newspapers and on TV, perhaps in the vain hope that their words can and will be someday used against them in a court of law.
—Kim Jensen, June 15, 2026
Follow the link to read an in-depth interview with Roxana Crisólogo and me that appeared in LIT magazine last January for more background and context.