Hydraulic Press
Half the day passed
watching steamroller videos
:
steamroller vs banana stalks
steamroller vs shampoo bottles
steamroller vs glass eye
steamroller vs Duracell batteries
I feel that it is my duty to be
on the side of resistance
the result is almost always the same
a tangle of wires, a paste
or a mound of dust
but sometimes
when I’m at the point
of giving up the fight
a can of hairspray
bursts and blackens
the gears of the machine
Midlife Crisis
my midlife crisis
is named Sarah Connor
like her
I realized one day
that I was not prepared
for the end of the world
I’ve passed through life
without knowing how to make fire
with rocks or construct
a shelter with mud and bark
in my training I’ve learned
that survival depends on
ten pieces of equipment that start with C
:
cord, cutter, cloth, canteen
and the knots that are required
to suspend an elephant from a branch
none of the C’s
stand for computer
Translator’s Note:
Ánuar Zúñiga Naime is an anti-establishment poet from Mexico City that I had the pleasure of meeting in Mexicali where we were both presenting work at the Tiempo de Poesia festival in 2019. Both of us had our readings scheduled at the exact same time so we did not initially hear each other’s work, but we became fast friends, and I visited him every time I was in CDMX after that. I greatly appreciate how Ánuar has been able to carve a place for himself without being a part of the very academically-driven literary scene that permeates Mexico.
His work often examines the realities of contemporary life for the everyday citizen that is more concerned about survival and living, rather than what critical theory represents in the zeitgeist. That is not to say his work is not deeply introspective and philosophical, it just addresses these questions in an approachable way. Nihilism is interspersed with pop culture references and bits of humor that allow the reader to both worry and laugh at the state of the world.
In 2021, I spent the month of January staying with him at his apartment. During that period, I translated some of his poems that appeared in Alligator Zine that same year. More recently, we organized a bilingual reading in CDMX where we read our work and read translations of the other’s poems. The two poems that are appearing in ANMLY are from that set of translations. While translating the work, we worked closely with one another. We first created what we felt was a strong representation of the poem, and then exchanged notes of suggestions on what we liked and what interpretations we felt would work better. In some poems, like “my midlife crisis is named Sarah Connor,” it was more important to keep the alliteration of the letters, so words were changed to preserve that. In other poems, a direct translation was best. While the translations were at times collaborative, they were both ultimately the work of the translator. I chose to translate the work because I hope the reader finds a bit of themselves and the world in the poems as I have been able to.
Ánuar Zúñiga Naime (Mexico City, 1982) is the author of the books Sector 7-G, el metabolismo de los reptiles, Pretty hate caffeine, and Fortune cookie. His work has appeared in the journals Eme Equis, Escala, Low-Fi Ardentia, Playboy Mexico, and others. Since 2009, he has been part of the multimedia poetry collective Los KFGC.
Zachary C Jensen is a writer, journalist, educator, and translator. He is the founding editor of the journal Angel City Review as well as the editor for the animals chapbook series from Business Bear Press. His work has appeared in Art Memo, Pank, Entropy, Circulo De Poesia, Dispatches From the Poetry Wars, the San Diego Reader, and other places.
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