translated from the Spanish by KM Cascia and Garrett Phelps
Born in Buenos Aires in 1940, Osvaldo Lamborghini was an unpublishably obscene and untranslatably brilliant writer of poetry and prose, a queer icon, and a leading figure of the Neobaroque movement of the 70s and 80s. The three books of his work that appeared during his lifetime—El fiord, Sebregondi retrocede, and Poemas—had a devoted and often fanatical readership, which included novelist César Aira, who has since played a major role in Lamborghini’s posthumous reputation. He spent his final years in Barcelona, working on Teatro proletario de la cámara (“Proletarian Chamber Theater”), an immense cross disciplinary project composed of writing, painting, pornography and photographic collage. He died, in exile, in 1985.
Untitled
Cheap beer is pale and costly
sunsettish like Virginia tobacco
just like... lara, lara, lara
Drunk
Totally slobbering
Thighs
underwear right out in public
Since she
Attacks if the vine
handsome little lordly
cocks confront her too
so...
So...
Stop it, cut it out, enough
Poetry bores
me
to tears;
—Tears
me to shreds
a special tear
ink for no page
Ink distilled in laughter
(and belly
caresses)
for us, for me
desperate whore...
(GIDDYUP)
“If the pimp don’t pass
I’ll have too much ass
One is one or double
still the bussy shivers
zero over zero, equal to
equals eight:
8
But this crazy bitch
long since lost it
like the ex-husband predicted
feeble graffiti
beneath a hard eraser
she goes down
with no dick
and therefore 8 is
00 dung smeared infinity
Tear me
Kiss me oh month by month
I heard (strange thing
I became gauchoesque in Spain today)
***
Obviously I shit on exile
I’m not stupid
or strange
in any way
I’m not going to endure atlantically
until my ass cramps
like that virginia-blonde cow stomps
drops poop on toiletpampas
from Tadeys
Many Frictions? Proof of Reality? Litany or Masochistic Song?
Pubis and sphincter.
Daisies with no petals, litany,
Nothing: not one petal to yank.
Daisies happy and
At the same time unhappy,
Pubis and sphincter:
To live coherently
With some state!
There is one body
One only, and true
Not thousands, litany
Many frictions
Frictions of pubis
Frictions of sphincter
Organs of eye
Organs of pleasure.
Litany or masochistic song.
Daisies: all blood flowed
When the crude mower's moment passed.
The whip is an organ of the sphincter.
But not even beautiful uniforms
Even for some nobodies to settle into.
Or for dressing naked flowers.
Ice plain, plain of sphincters.
Once again proof of reality
And once again protest
Litany, masochistic song.
Nobodies less than nothings, nor
Nothings less than nobodies.
Nothing, not even a pair of epaulets
Or a tasseled parade baton,
In exchange for our petals,
In exchange for nothing.
The void starts to happen
And it's all that happens, the only thing
Emperor, king and sovereign.
Litany: our bodies,
Flattened portraits on the earth...
Our bodies,
Flattened portraits on the earth...
Litany, all is litany and litany,
Death and shit.
Monodal monoejaculation.
Dollarstore monocles, oblique and tedious, litany:
Many frictions
Frictions of pubis
Frictions of sphincter.
And here comes the idiot with his questions.
Where is the wound?
In the halo,
In the anus,
In the connotations.
Always in the aura, litany, masochistic song,
In the circle: a courtly wound.
The sphincter is (frictions of pubis, many frictions)
by definition that which “consumes” and “morphs.”
Litany, masochistic song.
Our skin, myriad,
sphincters as rose windows.
Excremental rose in a cardinal body.
Flattened earth, litany, no points or horizons.
Sea of farewells and we’re back already.
Litany, masochistic song:
Frictions of pubis
Frictions of sphincter.
KM Cascia was born in Michigan City, Indiana in 1979. They are the translator of Manuel Maples Arce’s City: Bolshevik Superpoem in 5 Cantos (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2010) and Stridentist Poems (World Poetry Books, 2023) as well as numerous translations published in small outlets on- and offline, such as Apiary, Circumference, and Anomalous. Formerly an editor of the translation journals Asymptote and Calque, they’re also the author of two collections of poems, Goethe and Days.
Garrett Phelps was born in Phoenix, Arizona in 1990. His work has been
published by BOMB, The Brooklyn Rail, Action Books, Fence, and Asymptote,
where he formerly served as Poetry Editor. He lives in New York City.