Film

Nostalgia is the title of a cheesy movie. A movie that does not reach its climax. A movie that

ends in the second to last scene.  Nostalgia begins with the description of a body and a

bedroom. A list of belongings and bruises. A suitcase where all clocks fit. A body afflicted

for other bodies.

Nostalgia takes place on the seventh floor. From the bedroom window, the night is visible,

the waning moon is visible, the airport lights are visible. The pause button is visible.

Nostalgia commences one day when the past boils away memory. And the present is

summarized in a kiss. And in another. And in an abyss full of beaten lips and scratched up

backs. The whole body is a kissed up place. Every beauty spot is virgin terrain, unkissed.

Like this, with each imperfection, with each stain in the skin.  Without memories. Without

gravity. 

Nothing tastes the same in the wake of nostalgia. Not even in the sequence of the window

and the cigarette and the book opened to page 219. After the peach syrup and the smoking

grass. Nothing is as dense and as sweet as nostalgia captured in the dried up stains on the

mattress.

Nostalgia is a 16 mm film. And now it’s a still shot smoldering in a camera. Nostalgia is the

image of a man who devours a woman’s feet and ejaculates wings.

Translated by Heath Wing

“Film” is from the book Epidermia, (El Gaviero Ediciones, 2011), which has not yet been translated into English.

You can read and listen to the poem in the original Spanish here.