“A Mosquito Talks to Another Mosquito”
by Ulises Alaniz, Translated by Ulises Alaniz and Lauren Schenkman
Translators’ Statement: These two poems come from Retrato Hablado (“Spoken Portrait”), an unpublished collection-in-progress. In this collection, Alaniz explores the tensions between speaking and silence, absence and presence, in the context of historical and current political violence in Nicaragua. In "A Mosquito Talks to Another Mosquito," Alaniz critiques Nicaraguans' hollow, almost touchingly naive perpetuation of class distinctions and paradigms imposed by Spanish and American colonizers.
Alaniz is bilingual, with Spanish as his first language; Schenkman is a bilingual American—her mother is from Nicaragua—with English as her first language. Alaniz and Schenkman translate poetry as a team, talking through nuances of connotation, testing out rhythms, and finding sneaky ways to make the essence of Nicaraguan cultural references somehow palpable to non-Nicaraguans. In 2019, their translations of five poems by Nicaraguan poets, including a poem by Alaniz, were published online with Tin House.
Keep your distance, we’re not equals.
My spots are lighter,
Yours are common to any barrio’s dirty puddle.
I fly everywhere—
wine flows like water,
opera, theater, clean streets.
You never fly far from the puddle where you spawned, filthy towns infested with your kind.
You snatch blood from beggars, mercaderas, prostitutes, street dogs, horses with ribcages poking out.
My proboscis, more adept, suctions
intelligent victims, educated
young skins traded in dollars.
When I die, my body will float
in glass jars, scientists will discover
cures to dengue, malaria,
chikungunya.
You’ll die squashed in a public restroom,
shrouded in shit-caked toilet paper.
So I’ve told you--
Keep your distance.
We’re not equals.
Limítese porque no somos iguales.
Mis manchas son más claras,
las suyas comunes en charcos de barrio.
Viajo por todos lados
el vino se bebe como agua,
opera, teatro, calles sin basura.
Nunca vuela lejos del charco donde nació
ciudad polvosa infestada con su estirpe.
Usted roba la sangre de pordioseros, mercaderas, prostitutas, perros callejeros, caballos a los que se les asoman las costillas. Mi pico, más hábil, succiona...
elijo víctimas inteligentes, educadas
pieles jóvenes que se cotizan en dólares.
Cuando muera, mi cuerpo flotará
en vaso de vidrio,
científicos hallarán cura para dengue, paludismo
chikungunya.
Usted morirá aplastado en baño público
envuelto en papel lleno de excremento.
Ya le dije
limítese
no somos iguales.
Ulises Alaniz is a poet and English teacher from León, Nicaragua. He has participated in poetry recitals organized by La Promotora Cultural Leonesa and the International Poetry Festival of Granada. Some of his poems have appeared in translation in the Italian literary magazine Minerva.
Lauren Schenkman’s journalism and fiction has been published in The New York Times Magazine, Atlas Obscura, TED Ideas, The Hudson Review, Electric Literature, The Kenyon Review, and Granta, among other places. She has co-produced radio stories for Afropop Worldwide and Public Radio International's The World. She was a reporter and editor at Science Magazine and a Fulbright grant recipient in Nicaragua.