Instructions for Immersion

The process is simple.

You should bury yourself in the night
like someone entering the jungle
naked,
like a child
trying to walk
the last solidity of water,
the lakes depths.

From there
if luck is on your side
and perseveres
and walks in your footprints
until the abyss
and doesn’t stop,
you’ll emerge as a new self
stripped of yourself
a self that’s been visited many times
close and unknown.

It’s a center
vibrating with hidden music
and from your hands
—small and fragile—
a pristine song
will take flight.

INSTRUCCIONES PARA LA INMERSIÓN

El procedimiento es sencillo.

Deberá usted internarse en la noche
como quien se interna en la selva
desnudo,
como un niño
que busca caminar
la solidez última del agua,
el fondo del aljibe.

De allí
si la suerte le es propicia
y persevera
si avanza sobre sus pasos
hasta el abismo
y no desiste,
surgirá usted como un ser nuevo
despojado de sí mismo
un ser que ha sido muchas veces visitado
cercano y a la vez desconocido.

En su centro
vibrará una música escondida
y de sus manos
—frágil y diminuto—
alzará vuelo
un canto prístino.

MELISSA SAUMA is a Bolivian poet and an economist by profession with an MBA in Business Management as well as a degree in creative writing from Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Her book, Luminiscencia, won the 8th Premio Nacional Escritores Noveles from the Cámara Departamental del Libro de Santa Cruz, Bolivia.

ARIEL FRANCISCO is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Florida Review, Guernica, The New Yorker and elsewhere. The Miami New Times named him one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019.

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