The Puerto Rican Literature Project

for Fabo Feliciano Graniela

One afternoon you tell me

while we shared a piece of furniture

that poetry is the plagiarism of the body

I reply

that poetry is a bathing suit

and even a beach chair

to sit in and be

while all is in motion

I understood that our bond

was always explicitly poetic

It’s one thing to go to the beach

in your underwear

and another to be bikini-ready

Even though they may seem the same

the bikini is made for the sea

poetry’s for healing

and friendship is for all of the above.

Translator’s note: Díaz’s poem is deceptively simple yet makes elegant use of the vernacular as it reflects on relationships, bodies, and poetry itself. In translating, I opted for the vernacular English option as much as possible. For instance, the expression “en ropa interior” carries no pronoun (literally “in underwear”), so between “in your underwear” and “in one’s underwear” I chose the former even though it might create confusion with the “you” already in the poem. I felt that “in your underwear” was more idiomatically sound in vernacular English and also that the poem potentially welcomes the confusion of second persons this double “you” creates. One thing that gets lost in translation is the feminine definite articles in “la poesía” and “la amistad” since English has only one definite article independent of gender and number (“the”), and in any case we would just say poetry and friendship, not “the poetry” and “the friendship” when referring to them in a general sense, as Díaz does here. Díaz’s poem ends with a beautiful enumeration that uses definite articles to link “el bikini” (masculine in Spanish) to poetry and friendship (both feminine in Spanish) in a subtle meditation on gendering that resists translation into English grammar.