Brynne Rebele-Henry

/Združene države Amerike, 1999

Brynne Rebele-Henry (1999, ZDA) Prva knjiga Brynne Rebele-Henry
Mesopisi (Fleshgraphs) je izšla leta 2016 pri založbi
Nightboat Books. Njena druga knjiga, Avtobiografija
rane (Autobiography of a Wound), je prejela pesniško
nagrado AWP Donalda Halla in bo to jesen izšla
pri University of Pittsburgh Press. Njen prvi roman,
Dekle Orfej (Orpheus Girl) bo leta 2020 izšel pri
Soho Press. Za svoje pisanje je B. Rebele-Henry že
prejela številne nagrade, mdr. leta 2015 pesniško
nagrado Louise Louis in Emily F. Bourne, ki jo
podeljuje Ameriško društvo za poezijo, leta 2016
nagrado za prozo adroit in leta 2017 nagrado Glenne
Luschei časopisa Prairie Schooner.

Pesmi

Alba za rano / Aubade For a Wound

Reci mi, da ni bila rdeča, da so bile, ko sva krvaveli, samo pajčevine v obliki zlomljene maternice, da so bili šivi trepalnice, ki so se trzaje odpirale, senca dekleta ponoči in utripajoča svetilka v verde prostoru, polnem mrtvih nekoga drugega, in je bila notranjost mojih ust obložena z duhovi kot s plombami, zlato je bliskalo iz moje notranjosti, drgnilo kamne, dokler se niso obrabili do prahu, in molilo k nečemu večjemu od nas, opazovalo premeščanje kosti, dokler nisem bila več na varnem, dokler nisem postala predmet lova, si zadajala brazgotin, da mi jih ne bi mogel nihče drug, dekle ne postane ženska, dokler je ne zlomijo, zato sem se lomila, dokler ni bilo moje telo le še prah in roke nekoga drugega, dokler niso postale moje žile tako jalove, da vanje niso mogli spraviti igel, bolj odpadek kot dekle.

Prevod: Jernej Županič

Tell me it wasn’t red, that when we bled it was only cobwebs in the shape of a broken womb, that the stitches were eyelashes twitching open, the shadow of a girl at night and a flickering lamp in a verde room filled with someone else’s dead, ghosts lining the insides of my mouth like fillings, gold flashing out through my insides, rubbing stones until they wore to dust and praying to something larger than ourselves, watching the bones shift until I was no longer safe, until I was something to be hunted, scarred myself so no one else could do it for me, a girl isn’t a woman until she’s been broken so I broke myself until my body was only dust and someone else’s hands, until my veins turned so barren they couldn’t get needles in, something more refuse than girl.

Glava ženske, 220 pr. Kr. / Head of a Woman, 220 B.C.

Nedelja kot raztežaj zarje, ki si ga našla, ga podržala, majhnega in lesketavega, kot ureznina nečesa, kar nisva midve v presušeni postelji – bili sva vešči in najina krila so bila barve modrozelenih modric in še vedno sva bili zapacani z rdečo, kot temna vlažna glina, ki sva jo našli pod pomolom, bolestni vlažni občutek nama je lezel v usta kot med, s katerim so naju naši duhovniki mazilili, preden sva postali nesveti dekleti, tista tišina kot nepremična maternična tišina krsta, v časih, ko bi še lahko bili rešeni, ko so bila tvoja usta še vedno usta, sva se do slabosti nažirali praznih vrečk za sladkor in puščali zrnom, da so se na najinih jezikih topila v bolezen – to je bilo pred polnočnimi telefonskimi vilicami, preden je postala hiša majhna od tvojega venenja. Potepuške mačke so zakrožile okrog zadnjih vrat, se skušale pritihotapiti noter, zato sva okna prekrili s časopisi, da bi zunaj zadržali nekaj, česar nisva poznali, tvoji povoji so bili kot mala metulja krila v temi. To je bilo, še preden sem spoznala dekle v avtu v temi, in njen avto je bil poln ovitkov sladkorčkov – stari presušeni bomboni so se lesketali kot zlate ribice v temnem morju njenih zadnjih sedežev. Potem sva šli čez koruzno polje in rekla je Hotela sem zgolj biti sveta / nisem hotela biti takšna / pokvarjena, vsak psalm si je z markerjem napisala na stegno: Gnusoba / ne smeš ležati ne smeš ležati z istim, gladkost mrež koruznega polja, ki hrskajo pod najinimi stopali kot trupelca. Njeno ime sem si z njenimi ključi ujedkala v roko in se delala, da si ga nisem. Potem ko si odšla, sem nehala jesti sladkor in začela piti sol, zmešano z mlačno vodo, hišo sem napolnila s starim, postanim pecivom in pustila, da so glazure zgnile in splesnele.

Prevod: Jernej Županič

Sunday like a stretch of dawn you found, held it small and glistening like a slash of something not us in the dried up bed– we were the moths and our wings were that sort of blue-green bruise and the red was still staining us like the dark wet clay we found underneath the pier, the sick damp feeling spreading into our mouths like the honey our priests used to anoint us with before we became unholy girls, that silence like the still uterine quiet of baptism, back when we could still be saved, when your mouth was still a mouth we would get sick off empty sugar packets and let the grains dissolve into illness on our tongues– this was before the midnight telephone hooks, the house gone small with your withering. Feral cats started circling our back doors, trying to sneak in so we newspapered the windows to keep something we didn’t know out, your bandages like small butterfly wings in the dark. This was before I met a girl in a car at night and her car was filled with sugar wrappers– old dried up candies glinting like minnows in the dark ocean of her backseat. After, we walked through a cornfield and she said I just wanted to be holy/I didn’t want to be this way/wrong, she wrote each psalm on her thigh with Sharpie: An abomination/thou shall not lay shall not lay with your same, the slick of the cornfield’s skeins crunching under our feet like small bodies. I etched her name into my arm with her keys and pretended I didn’t. After you left, I stopped eating sugar and started drinking salt mixed with tepid water, filled the house with old stale pastries and let the frosting rot and mold.

Preludij k doseganju svetništva / Prelude to Becoming Holy

Vizije se začnejo pri šestih, limeta v tvojih ustih je grenka, elegija za vse, kar si nekoč želela postati, se lomi nad vodo kot nevihta.
Vid, tako so rekli temu.
Tako dekle postane sveto: najprej postane prazno, postane nič več kot odsotnost.
Biti dekle je biti odprtina, nekaj, kar se lahko zapolni, na jeziku debela plast sladkorja, a vse, kar si še vedno, je vlažna in prazna, odprta usta, kamenjana luknja. Katarina, tvoje grlo poplavljeno z meto in slano vodo, ki naj ozdravita tvojo željo po mehkobi.Ženske, ki si jih poznala v temi, kot da bi lahko kdaj postali kaj drugega kot stanje po rani.Katarina, ponoči, saj veš, je v zraku prostor za dekleta, kot si ti.Zvezde so lepe samo zaradi svoje odsotnosti s preostanka neba, zaradi teh raztežajev nove praznine.Torej misliš, da bi pustila mraku, da se pokvari, kot gnijoča hruška, dokler ne bi bil mehak in poln kot zobje?

Prevod: Jernej Županič

The visions begin at six, the lime bitter in your mouth, the elegy for all you once wanted to become breaking across the water like a storm.
The sight, they called it.
This is how a girl becomes holy: first she becomes empty, becomes nothing but absence.
To be a girl is to be an opening, something to be filled, sugar thick on your tongue, but all you are still is wet and empty, mouth open, stoned hole. Catherine, your throat flushed with mint and salt water to cure your desire for softness.The women you knew in the dark, as if we could ever become anything more than after-wound.Catherine, at night, you know, the air holds a place for girls like you.Stars are beautiful only because of their absence in the rest of the sky, because of that stretch of new emptiness. So you think you’ll let the dusk turn, like a rotting pear, until it is as soft and full as teeth?

Avtobiografija mene kot dekleta brez ust / Self-Biography as a Girl With No Mouth

Avtoportret mene kot rane, ptičje lobanje in kamna / Self-Portrait as a Wound, a Bird Skull & a Stone

Mačke nepremične v temi pred tvojo hišo, na plaži sva pustili pesku, da je popokal najini telesi v nekaj, kar nista bili najini telesi, in risala si črte po moji koži s krivimi robovi školjk in v noči sva pozabili tvoje prste na moji hrbtenici. Tvoj oče je spremenjen v kamen, nekega dne, kmalu, ga bova našli prevrnjenega na taisti stopnici do verande, toda tokrat se njegove oči ne bodo več odprle, ali pa bodo odprte, ne da bi kdaj pomežiknile, črepinje razbitosteklenične modre in napol zašepetane obljube, dotika, ki sva ga skušali pozabiti. Tvoja mama je rekla, da je telo motor in da so dekleta kot midve požgana, kante bencina, puščene na asfaltu. Po podrastnem požaru sva sedeli na tvojem podstrešju, sesali ožganost s svojih prstov z usti, polnimi saj. Tvoj oče je rekel, naj moliva za povodenj, zato sva začeli vse sežigati, pustili sva svojim kolenom, da so začela črneti, in začeli kaditi, kot bi naju lahko za polna pljuča pepela rešilo, kot da nebo ne bi bilo rdeče, toda tu in tam ponoči vseeno splezava v rezervoar, plavava, dokler ne moreva več, in se nato uleževa v mrtvaka.

Prevod: Jernej Županič

The cats still in the dark outside your house, at the beach we let the sand chap our bodies into something not our bodies and you drew lines over my skin with the crooked edges of shells and we forgot your fingers on my spine in the night. Your father is a man turned to stone, one of these days we will find him rocked over on the very same porch step but this time his eyes won’t open again, or they will be open and unblinking, shards of broken-bottle blue and a half-whispered promise, the touch we tried to forget. Your mother said a body is an engine and girls like us are scorched, gasoline cans left on the pavement. After the brushfire we sat in your attic, sucked the singe off our fingers, mouths full of soot. Your father said to pray for a flood so we started burning everything up, let our knees start to blacken and took up smoking, as if a lungfull of ash could save us, as if the sky weren’t red, but some nights we still climb the reservoir, swim until we can’t anymore and then we float.