“Family Song” by Javier Etchevarren | Blackbird v15n1

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back JAVIER ETCHEVARREN
translation from the Spanish by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Family Song

I
I shouldn’t have been born.
With a knitting needle
in her womb,
my mother
did not want me to be.

II
A knitting needle
in the uterus
of my mother.

Her strength saved me.
My current weakness.

III
I have only love for my mother.
Only that.

IV
My father wanted to leave us.
He left.

V
I run to hug him.
He kisses me.
He’s grown a beard,
smells different.

The first memory of my life.
The last memory of my father.

VI
It’s admirable:
my mother could with three children
I cannot even with myself.

VII
He died, my father.
I never could call him
“father.”

VIII
I do not like families.
I avoid them.