/lit/ - Literature

Wrote a poem about him for a class last year. Not very good, but I figured now is an appropriate time to post it.

Coffee with Gabriel García Márquez


I found myself at a
Starbucks in downtown
getting coffee with Gabriel
García Márquez. He looked
old, but not nearly as old
as he should be. He ordered us
two grande straight black coffees—
the kind you could feel staining
your teeth and coating
your throat on
the way down. It was fairly
embarrassing, as he kept on reading and
re-reading the Starbucks Fair Trade Agreement
poster, and ruefully chuckling
to himself
all the while.
He had appeared
in the stall next to me, with a bang
that filled the bathroom with
the thick aroma of oregano
and begonias. He noisily
relieved himself, then pounded
at my door asking
if I’d be all day.

Over coffee, he was animatedly
chatting about how modern literature
needed a resurrección, but I was
distracted by the
yellow butterflies that kept
crawling in and out
of his shirt cuffs and collar.
“So,” he was wrapping it up,
“La cosa más importante,
is that you see with eyes both
omniscient
and clairvoyant.” Márquez
slammed his cardboard cup
on the coffee table
conclusively, squashing a
rogue butterfly that had
ventured too far
out of the safety of Márquez’s
right cuff.
I blinked twice. He
sighed, then gestured as if
to whisper something
into my ear. I lean
real close, then he leaps
across the coffee table
headfirst, and enters my
chest.
I’m annoyed, bordering
on angry at Márquez,
when I realize my eyes hurt.
I rub them, then
look around.
The Starbucks frother
roared like
dragon fire, a man with
the languid look of one who
weeps in private was relating
a crude joke to a sturdy woman, whose
harsh laughter split through the
coffee house like broken
glass. A businesswoman
ordering a five-dollar coffee has a face
reminiscent of an anorexic iguana,
and I see the kids and husband
that she will not go home to.
A homeless man
to my left is mumbling
nonsense of the most profound
nature, and I see the kid he used to
be, the man he is now, and everything
that he could be, all superimposed
on top of each other. But more
than anything, I see every person
in this Starbucks as sparks on a
dark canvas, shimmering with all
the incandescent, triumphant beauty of
a human life, but simultaneously
ephemeral and ultimately tragic,
and solitary, above all else, solitary.
And although I have not
seen Gabriel García Márquez
after that
particular episode, on
some days
when I strain
my senses, I can still hear
the whisper of butterfly wings
on begonia-scented
winds.

>>4753194
Qué de preguntas, y qué pocas respuestas.

>>4753596
He leído a Mario Benedetti porque me lo recomendó una amiga. He de decir que me gustó en su momento.

>>4753642
Gabo estaría de acuerdo contigo. Ver imagen adjunta.

Es más... ¿Qué es lo realmente importante cuando uno trata de comunicar una idea? ¿Las faltas de ortografía que comete, o la idea evocada? ¿Es más importante la forma o el contenido? Si uno sangra las palabras... Si uno las llora... Si las siente... ¿Es su forma realmente importante?

>>4754167
Depende de lo que quiera expresar. A veces me siento más cómodo pensando ciertas cosas en inglés, y cuando las escribo, me parecen más bonitas que cuando lo hago en castellano.

Una reflexión quería hacer: despues de pasearme con esperanza por todo el hilo, he observado, no sin cierta desazón, hasta qué punto alimentamos nuestros cerebros con "publicidad" "anglicismos" y la verga que los parío.

Estén orgullosos de sus venas abiertas, carajo.

Colonel Aureliano Buendía > José Arcadio Buendía > Aureliano Babilonia > Aureliano Segundo > José Arcadio Segundo > Aureliano José > José Arcadio > José Arcadio II > Aureliano III > Arcadio