IN FRONT OF US A CLEAR FORM
-translated by Ian U. Lockaby

makes love with the space in which it situates
its form its effect its casket.
It makes love before us
and the space keeps its form occupied.
Love is made on a misery
that would turn us to animals:
a piece of sea wrapped in words.
Bring me a dead animal
hanging from your voice a lock
love and its months-long program
in a Styrofoam model-Japan where the snow
is a bed of ash to suspend the cocaine.

THE DANISH DOCK

We must find the Danish dock, no matter what.
Its name is familiar to everyone
but no one’s able to remember where it is:
in the heads of the villagers
there is something else in place of a dock.
Set upon the boards is a pile of places
the demonym disfiguring the memory
even of those that had never left
the space where they erase their own memory.
With insistence that it is anything else:
Tartar, Veracruzano, Osornino.
The mist erases the reality
that reappears behind the mist.
The dock sinks and floats
and our frenzy ends
when we see that it is our city
(not the one in its place)
Monday morning May
the cordillera extended in view
the sun freezes, weighs karats of the severance pay.

Sebastián Gómez Matus is a poet and translator who lives in Valparaíso, Chile. He's the author of PO, La Constitution Borrada, Como imaginé Bagdad y cómo la encontré, and Animal muerto. He recently co-translated Chilean poet Jorge Teillier's selected poetry into English, and it is forthcoming from Song Cave. 

Ian U Lockaby is a poet and translator who lives in New Orleans. He is the translator of Gardens by Chilean poet Carlos Cociña (Cardboard House Press, 2021) and Probable Synonyms of the Word Sololoy by Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas (Carrion Bloom, 2025). He edits mercury firs.