Estación Literaria: Nelson Alonso

The Sad Family (1935), by Franz Sedlacek

We present, for this Estacion Literaria’s edition, a selection coming from the most recent collection of poems by Nelson Alonso, Autobiografía de mis pasos, which would translate to Autobiography of my footsteps. These poems won the Juegos Florales poetry prize in El Salvador back in 2021, and it shows. The text follows a book structure but draws some inspiration from music, due to the presence of interludes. Throughout the poems, there is a sole voice that explores the deeps of his being. During this internal journey, images are described in a variety of gray tones that show uncertainty, pain, sorrow, despair; emotions that can be tragically linked to family and convey Alonso’s brave vulnerability and acute sensibility.

The following stanza is a perfect example:

Mom, while looking at me,

pretends that I’m her son’s ghost,

but she doesn’t know that I’m the flower rotting her garden.

Here, according to the poetic voice, the Mother —a somewhat recurrent element in the poems— rather assumes that his son died and came back to life as a ghost, and, presumably, a nuisance. He is just a shadow of what she remembers him to be. However, the Son has a darker opinion on the matter: although he sees himself as something beautiful, he is the one responsible for constantly ruining his family.

The criteria followed for this brief showcase of Alonso’s poetry is based on sharing impactful poems that do not rely on their previous or next poems in the book’s scheme. We understand that, usually, a poem does not require another poem to be understood. However, taking the collection of poems’ structure into account, we also assume that the poet would like the reader to read the text in its entirety, and that makes sense because of its vast number of themes and details. There is something to be said about its strange but interesting metaphors (My weeping: that’s were war built its home); or about the repetition of commands of silence to something that do not appear in this anthology. But it’s not feasible to talk about everything that this book offers. If you’d like to obtain a physical copy in Spanish, feel free to reach the author or the publisher through Facebook.

Lastly, we hope that readers enjoy this glimpse of these enjoyable poems.

Part One

IV

I don’t care for days:

they have destroyed the flowers of my garden.

Who has ever thought that my backyard never looked for fertility?

No one has stopped by to consider the smallest things

(my room is so small

that my abandonment of faith barely fits.)

Mom, while looking at me,

pretends that I’m her son’s ghost,

but she doesn’t know that I’m the flower rotting her garden.

VIII

The children with the dark background show their black smile:

“So impish, they crossed the line”, they say,

and I believe that self-compassion

is one of the problems of our century.

A constellation made of water and trees

appears from the dark background.

The risen head

screams in a barely audible tone,

a conch shell close to the eardrums 

that have burst due to pain.

And what is pain but a repercussion of hatred?

To loathe the hand is to pretend that we don’t have a body,

and to kiss the fingers is the origin of stiffness.

If the description feigns a glimmer of reality,

who am I to abandon myself to the problem?

I can barely lift my arms.

My eyes can barely land

on the backs that have been bruised by heavy rain.

Their hands tremble

because abstinence has the name of patriarchs

whom children have been numbed by years and silences.

Although, inside of the heart’s sockets,

rage is triggered by its beating

when a breeze poisons

the tuberculous necessity of imitating the bird,

whose wings are the epiphany of wax.

Burn, and burn, and burn.

There is no Word inside the feathers.

There are children, in the black background,

smiling at the gas chamber.

The issues of our century

are cycles

of those who forgot their childhood.

Part Two

II

I am repetition,

an unrelenting repetition 

of motifs that my lips shift.

Over the table,

a feast of eyes wander

to cry about me a bit more.

But distance transforms

the retina into a tear,

and makes the water’s emulsion

a word of confrontation

between solitude and my feet.

I see shadows covering my bedroom,

traces of rust on the sheets smeared of botulinum toxin.

I am repetition.

I am the relentless search

of an identity I never had:

a face that soaks of blood

over a yellow page,

a page of repetitions

that repeat

and keep on repeating,

like a memory that was shattered by the rain,

as a journey to the bedroom next door…

For faces look at me

with the color of fear

and my parents’ loathing

is the tenderness left by a fist on the wall.

Part Three

II

My land is a tree in the desert…

and the flood

is a furious hand that breaks eternity.

Thus, it slowly collapses

because it suffers with us,

and its branches exist to relieve our pain.

My weeping: that’s where war built its home.

The crust is infested by all of our dead…

because we ignore how the soil is through its roots.

However, the sun exists, and it’s mortal;

water drops,

and its lips have the appearance of titanium and mint.

Life makes the tree crumble,

and we imagine ourselves happy.

But the tree is dead.

Its green branches were dyed

by some fanatic of hope.

Then, termites came,

embraced it with their teeth,

and, while raising their flags,

they called it Freedom.

Epilogue

In the hands of sleep,

my eyes move forward

as an echo of eyelids and salt.

It’s the variation of approach:

the pupil in the half-empty glass

over the regular picture.

All that appears transcends the will of the wind;

each of my voice’s geometries

leaves a caress on the marble:

an amalgamation of planets.

My steps fit in the universe;

my closed eyes dwell in the sobriety of your skin.

I have gone through all of the sides of my name.

I have seen the caress become a scorpion,

and extend its tail to my throat.

Because I am a burning throat,

a reef that became saliva

piercing my lungs.

Unit and form

are, at most, constellations

in my hours of sleep,

a farewell of clocks

or a reminiscence of the tempest.

While I write this,

air burns me

and, close to the computer, a bottle vibrates slowly.

I believe that the evolution of things

lives on the table

to remind me that I come from dust,

and that I am a handful of soil over soil

without any living intentions.

The chlorotoxin emerges

from metaphysics and night.

The sobriety rises

from the most bitter alcohol.

For this is a poem made of loose ideas,

repetitions and structures

that evoke common places,

rusty calendars,

centipodes in a lockless door…

This poem is the sameness of finding myself every night,

venous exploration of dreams in a crystal net.

This poem preserves the maternal absence

and my father’s hatred,

the self-compassionate repetition of my steps

through the usual place 

while the half-empty glass

remains empty.

There’s nothing else.

Nothing exists in this poem

but a reality of beautiful words

and a bit of rubbing alcohol

to hallucinate ourselves

between a trench 

and forgiveness.

Nelson Alonso is a Salvadoran poet. Two-times winner of the Juegos Florales poetry prize in 2021 and 2024. Basta de anécdotas en la poesía (2023) and Autobiografía de mis pasos (2025) are his published books of poems. He manages Una verdad sin alfabeto, an online project that promotes literature.