Feb. 14, 2022
Audio
neurocuir
By Urayoán Noel
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neurocuir
By Urayoán Noel
es decir que te desmayas y no te hallas es la voz que se te pierde en el umbral de la noche y su baba que no acaba brota a chorros es decir que al jevo no le gusta que tu furor lo asusta y que la poesía es un conjuro de trepanaciones es alambres en el cráneo el combustir incontrolable de naciones es la soledad en la discoteca de incontables pisos donde todos se buscaban su polvo para hacerle corto circuito a su cerebro y el tuyo siempre en fuego es lo ebrio de estar vivo en plena convulsión planetaria cuando la red eléctrica ya no aguanta date duro bien duro contra el pavimento y pierde dientes y amigos y agoniza sentimientos bajo frisas de metal en hospitales de imperio con vista a los fuegos artificiales que llevarás dentro es saber siempre que hay un río que te cruza y que da al mar de donde vienes y donde mueres es escribir esto en un torrente de energía neural y luego colapsar nunca perder las palabras pero querer perderlas añorar la oquedad del carbón en los subsuelos de lo asible roquedal noumenal es no sentir nada y sentir todo y embelesarse con él o con ella o elle o con que neurocuir sea anagrama de cuero ruin y epilepsia de piel espía es cuando el epileptólogo te dice que el lado verbal de tu cerebro compensó por lo dañado y que le sorprende que seas funcional y esa palabra te suena a funcionario y tal vez eso seas funcionario de la palabra función primera y última de la baba recién nacida a la creciente pulsión sin bridas hasta la baba sideral de nuevo es saber que tu madre toma tu mismo anticonvulsivo y que ninguno de los dos le temen a la muerte porque siempre han estado en ese umbral de no conocer otra cosa salvo la belleza de un alfabeto constelar es ese kindling intraducible que describe aurora levins morales esa activación neurocorpórea provisoria nuestra y de nadie deja que irradie y que haga ruinas de los imperios del cuerpo-mente sondable hasta que se desfonde y convierta en algo que se asemeje a esa música incontenible en las espitas de una cuidad que se quema
is when you pass out and can’t find yourself is losing your voice in the threshold of night and the pooling drool as it unspools it’s that the guy you’re with can’t take it that your frenzy scares him and that poetry conjures trepanations it’s wires on your cranium the uncontrollable combustion of nations it’s the solitude at the club with neverending stairs where they all hooked up and sniffed to short circuit their brains and all the while your brain had been on fire it’s the drunkenness of being alive on a planet that convulses when the grid’s about to give out crash hard so hard against the pavement and lose teeth and friends and let death’s door open your senses under metal blankets in the hospitals of empire with a view of the fireworks you’ll carry inside you it’s always knowing that a river runs through you and that it leads to the sea where you’re from and where you die it’s writing this in a torrent of neural energy and then collapsing never running out words but wanting to run out longing for the hollowness of coal in a subsoil you can grasp noumenal crag it’s to feel nothing and feel everything to swoon over him or over her and them or over how epileptic and neurocuir are anagrams for epic I pelt and o ruin cure respectively it’s when the epileptologist tells you the verbal part of your brain compensated for the damaged part and that he’s surprised you’re functional and that word makes you think of the perfunctory and maybe that’s what you are a perfunctory word sorter serving any and no function from the newborn’s drool to the ever relentless drive and back to the galactic ooze it’s knowing that your mother takes your same anti-seizure medication and that neither of you is afraid of death because you’ve always been in that threshold of knowing nothing but the beauty of a constellated alphabet it’s that untranslatable kindling described by aurora levins morales that provisional neurocorporeal activation of ours and nobody’s let it irradiate and make ruins out of the fathomable mind-body until it staves in and becomes something that resembles that uncontainable music overwhelming the spigots of a burning city
Urayoán Noel
Urayoán Noel is the author of eight books of poetry, most recently Transversal (University of Arizona Press), which was longlisted for the PEN Open Book Award and named a Book of the Year by the New York Public Library. He has also published the critical study In Visible Movement: Nuyorican Poetry from the Sixties to Slam (University of Iowa Press), winner of the LASA Latino Studies Book Prize and an MLA Honorable Mention. As a translator of Latin American poetry, Noel has been a finalist for the National Translation Award and the Best Translated Book Award. His international performances include Poesiefestival Berlin, Barcelona Poesia, and the Toronto Biennial of Art, and his work has been exhibited at the Museum of the City of New York and the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. Originally from Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, Noel lives in the Bronx and teaches at New York University as well as at Stetson University’s MFA of the Americas.
Image Description: A light-skinned, mixed-race man with a mostly black beard and mustache is pictured from the chest up on a yellow-sand beach in Puerto Rico as waves break near the rocks behind him. He is staring beyond the camera while wearing a beige flat-cap hat and a 1980s-style shirt with gray and light yellow geometric patterns, which is unbuttoned at the top.