Hold, Yahweh!/Do not punish my enemies
Poetry
All that's left
Is the funeral
And the reading of the will.
Another prisoner is executed.
Long live the VCR
And his and her king-size bed.
The Constitution is the hearse.
Apple pie
In the sky.
Bury the body
In a wooden box
Under the Southern cross.
Turn up the volume
Eat your ice cream
And read about it in the paper
But will you share the grief?
Give me an epitaph,
Freedom is now at hand
Having never come before.
Nineteen-year-old Rodrigo Rojas de Negri was beaten and burned to death by Chilean security police for participating in an anti-government demonstration in July 1986. Veronica Rojas de Negri is his mother.
For Sara
The chain jangles like wind chimes
in the emptiness
as my key springs the padlock open.
Ten more steps
with the tense stillness
that has waited all day in these hallways
following me down the stairs.
Fortune and calamity, / rushing over us and overpowering ...