Fernanda Laguna

Tengo una tienda llamada El Universo donde voy a sentarme y a mirar las cosas que hay en él. Quería armar un espacio dobde poder juntar las cosas que están en el universo desde incectos muertos, ramas, semillas a objetos decorativos, bombachas y bijouterie. Antes cuando estaba recién separada iba a llorar y ahora que estoy mas contenta hago eventos para encontrarme con gente. Es mi cueva emocional. Es muy pequeño y se abre de par en par a la calle al levantar la persiana. El universo es minúsculo cuando miramos las fotos de la NASA y ni hablar cuando le sacamos fotos nosotros mismos a la luna. Siento que todo puede entrar en mi local, en su medida justa. Tengo muchas cajas envueltas en bellos papeles y allí guardo todas mezcladas más pequeñas cosas: Aros, capullos de seda, tierra, diapositivas, etc. Los únicos organismos vivos que lo habitan son las arañas, bichitos varios y a veces pasean por él alguna que otra rata. A veces dejo que todo se ensucie, es una posibilidad de la existencia y eso me encanta. Dibujo con el dedo en el polvo una aparición brillante que me incluye en el paisaje. Lo que más me gusta es no comprender la causa de la belleza.

I have a store called El Universo where I go sit and look at the things that are in it. I wanted to have a space where I can put together the things that are in the universe, from dead insects, branches and seeds to decorative objects, panties and jewellery. Before, when I had just broken up with my boyfriend, I went there to cry and now that I am happier I do events to get together with people. It's my emotional cave. It's very small and it opens wide towards the street when you open the shutters. The universe is tiny when we look at the NASA pictures and even more when we take take pictures of the moon ourselves. I feel that everything can fit in my space, in its right measure. I have a lot of boxes wrapped in beautiful paper where I keep more small things: earrings, silk cocoons, dirt, slides, etc. The only living organisms that inhabit it are spiders, different bugs, and sometimes one or two rats walk along. Sometimes I let everything get dirty, it's a possibility of existence and I love that. I draw with my finger a bright revelation that includes me in the landscape. What I like the most is not understanding the cause of beauty.

A Woman Like Me, For Example

A woman
doesn't deserve
the time
to dedicate herself
to things that interest her.

Because...
Is it because the things that interest a woman
aren't interesting?
Or that...
A woman doesn't show enough interest
in the things that interest her for others
to think they're interesting and give her the time?
Or is it that...
The interesting things she does are things that are interesting to someone else
precisely because they're things that someone else doesn't find interesting?

A woman asks herself
so many questions...
A woman like me, for example
who has a few brief moments
to do something that interests her.

And while these moments pass her by
she asks herself
Was this what I wanted to do?
Ask myself questions like these?
Waste this precious hour they've permitted me to have
thinking about things I'm not even sure I want to think about?
Does a woman really deserve
the time to do the things she wants to do
if she doesn't know what she wants to do, really?
Does she deserve the time it takes
to believe that she wants to do something?
Does it even make sense to keep thinking about it?
It doesn't matter,
the lost time is what it is to be a woman.
A woman like me,
for example.

This is how it is and how it should and shouldn't be.

When a female human being thinks
she thinks
about whether she is a human being or not.
A woman believes that she is so bright
that therefore she doesn't know what she wants.
A woman believes she has to be so smart
that the rest of the world has to convince itself she's a stupid person
because deep down she believes that the more she's cast aside
the freer and happier she'll be.

And so she finds
meaning in her sadness or her lost time.
Or something like that... I don't know.
Anyway... it's very difficult to finish a poem
and give it a fixed meaning.
But it came out ok, right?
A woman is someone like me, for example.

From Housewife to Mom in a House

I don't have much to write about exciting things don't happen to me. Beautiful and above all tender things happen to me.
Tenderness, a smile, delicate laughter that doesn't wake the baby.
I'm always bumping up against things that are humbly beautiful.
I'm moved by the trees
that I see through the window grates in my apartment.
I can be moved by almost anything.
Seeing the sky between two apartments.
I've learned.... that in a millimeter of sky you can see the whole sky.
Or in a patch of grass that grows through the sidewalk....
all of nature.
I closed the printer so that the baby won't break it and I feel happy,
really happy.
Because the scotch tape lasted much longer than I thought it would,
how lovely...
It still sticks
even though it's dirty.
But that dirt... even the dirt is beautiful.
because in that dirt lie hidden the fingerprints of my baby and also the fingerprints
of my laboring hands that pass over so many lovely and practical things.

It's raining today...
and there was thunder a little while ago how lovely!
how exciting!
And how lovely that I have a few minutes to write, to rummage around in my emotions
and try to write something good, more or less. Isn't it?
At least...

I have a little while to try. Sooooo good!
And as if that weren't enough luck has it that it's raining and the baby is sleeping.
Silence.
I'm a fan of silence.
When the baby stops making little noises I love to listen to the cars
as they slide down the street wet with silence. And then the fading sound of the exhaust pipe.
Tic tic go the drops of rain as they fall into puddles
or into things that I can't see but that make them sound so good. Fantastic!
But fantastic isn't the word it's
––so good! how lovely...
Yesterday I did the wash and hung it out on the terrace and today... Luckily it rained.
And so thanks to the luck I have today tomorrow I don't have to go up and get it. How nice! How lovely!
There's nothing I like more than connecting the hose, putting the tube in the drain, pouring the soap
and fabric softener into the washer. I love it.
And more than anything I like doing it before I sip my morning maté. And how great it is, when everything goes well,
when one action leads to the next and I just: connect the hose,
put the tube in the drain, pour in the soap,
add the fabric softener, plug it in.
I choose option four
and I push the power button like a gold brooch
It's the best...

how lovely!
It's 1:10 in the morning.
Surely I'll be able to sleep for 6 hours and 50 minutes
And I begin to feel that I've wasted an hour and 10 minutes of sleep on this poem. Incredible...
Good....
At the very least I'm getting a few moments to express myself even though it seems that all I express is tenderness.
The other day I almost had an orgasm and I was so happy
that I posted on Fotolog:
If I have an orgasm today I'll buy everyone a beer!
In the end I didn't have one.
But at least I felt like it was coming So good!
And good...
Suddenly
now that I see it
I notice that the rain is actually pretty monotonous. Lovely, but the same as it was when I started my poem.
I also notice that the thunder crackles when you sing to it. And not enough for my taste.
I notice that the trees are asleep
and that they're not thinking about me.
That they don't appreciate me and don't get excited like I get excited about them.
That all the celebrating I do in their honor isn't something they return.
How unfair!
Unkind.
They're all happy with their new blooms.
I wrote a poem dedicated to them that I posted on Fotolog:

Welcome new generations... to forever and ever
with your freshness that brightens my days.
New generations that will come to see new generations.

Welcome new generations of little leaves
there's nothing lovelier than watching as the new, fresh blooms appear
full of sunlight
the only indispensible energy.

Welcome forever because we're born again
with each new generation of little leaves that arrives.
Today it's springforever.

And I posted an amazing photo that I took in the street
of the first blooming tree in the neighborhood.
And good...
You have to make do with what there is
even though it's hard to say exactly what that means.
What there is is what there is and in the little there is
is everything that there is in the universe.

So I don't know why I make all these problems for myself. I'm tired of complaining.
I have 6 hours to sleep
and in these 6 hours
are all the hours that have existed, and that will ever exist.
The thousands of nights when I slept for 8 hours.
In these 6 hours the dinosaurs appeared,
migrated, and were wiped out.
And the human being has done it all, all of it and all it will do.
The Tsunami came (remember?) and went
and already they've fixed the place up a ton.
The tree I see in the street was born and has already died
so that in these 6 hours I can also avenge myself
of its indifference.
There are all the times that I made love and also the times that I will
with all the wonderful orgasms
in all the positions that I tried and will try.
There's also the thunder all at once the way I like it,
good and strong,
all of it together at once.

Powerful. Rumbling right beside my ear
prrrrrrrrrr....
With sooooo many bolts of lightning falling near my bed
making a harmless capsule of clairvoyance
and protection all around me.
And everything is already destroyed
The end of the world has come!
and a new genesis has brought it back to life.
And so I don't get why I complain, if what I'm doing is complaining.
During these next 6 hours I finished a painting
I glued all my money to it and I also
glued the money that will come to me
And then in some kind of exorcism
I set it on fire.
And while the light illuminated my face
I laughed and then did nothing with the ashes.
I didn't even take photos to make a work of conceptual art
that I could sell to get back the burnt money.
I didn't even write a poem that would make up for
the despair of wishing I didn't do it.
All I did was go to sleep
and forget everything
Why would I need more than these 6 hours?
Why? To have another baby?
If during these 6 hours I had this one.
And I don't understand why I complain?
Is what I'm doing complaining?

Hmmm?

Basically
yes I do complain
but not about these 6 hours...
I complain about the last second of these 6 hours
the one that folds back on the first second.
Because what I seek most of all
is a grand finale... not just a good one.
I want the loveliest finale in the world.
Like an amazing kiss with my eyes closed,
like a really really good orgasm with screaming or not,
like a death so but so very black and brilliant
that it makes me blind and dizzy
and forces me to enter second 1
naked, unconscious, calm, spontaneous and happy
like a bloom in the new spring.

Fights

I'm a temple
a sword buried in a flowerpot
The wind blows
night comes
and pain materializes
as something I can't manage to see.
There it is
it stopped by the house where some friends live,
from others it departed,
and there it is
leaving its stains of solitude on the tiles.

The man at the nursery told me
I should put down a ring of salt
to protect the spider plants from the slugs.
I seduce sadness
playing a song for it
a well-known melody
to make its presence less chilly.
I decorate it
I write a poem for it
I make it a harmless body.
In no way
am I in favor of war.
The little blanket the baby's wrapped in
is made from threads of delicate silk,
a stitch of joy and a stitch of crying.

My friends cry,
I know,
they lie to me
they pretend they're ok.
I pretend too
tangled in my animal print bedspread.
Our bones are broken
we're devastating
slugs,
that's our essence.
First we eat each other's bones,
we're crawling all over the floor
we send each other emails,
we listen to each other on the phone,
we chat lying down on the moon.

I get an email
from Santa Fe
that says:
"Open radio
stop fumigating us"
and I wonder
what it's trying to tell me,
who only yesterday wanted to protect the fruit trees
from flies.

I feel like I'm being naive when I shut my eyes tight
to the prospect of war.
it makes me ashamed of myself,
I feel like an idiot.
I've waged an internal war
for years
because I try to go
against my own essence.
Essences
are repulsive to me.
I like poetry
and no one is born to be a poet.
Not even verses are born to be poetry.

I listen to a song
by Amanda Lear...
I want to exist at the forged
point
of a sword
made
of steel
just like her.

Skeletons are done,
now we use
metal alloys
malleable
and sharp.
We will destroy our natural
essence
to become
sporting weapons,
for decoration
and contemplation.
Utensils,
a little folding knife
that goes against its purpose.

I want to be the sword staking up
my tomato plants.
And at night receive the dew
so I can cry
harmlessly
beneath
the nature goddess.
And not cry the essence of crying
(I have no idea what I'm saying)
but...
cry smiles
gone crazy
with love.

Poem what are you doing with me?
Where are you taking me?
You've made it so poets consider me their enemy,
you've thrown me onto a battlefield
full of tanks.
The bombs fall
looka bomb fell
next to the "o"
Or is it hanging there
and this
war

is a dream?
I don't know
I've abandoned reason
and traded it in
for your rhythmic mind.
Damn you poetry
I won't fight against you,
we'll make love
here
among the corpses.

A bolt of lightning
strikes
the lightning rod
aaaaaaaahhhhhh!
and just like that it struck me.
But you, poetry,
you'll still be crazy
climbing into bed with my friends
making them
even crazier,

wiping out their essence.