XAVIER VILLAURRUTIA

from Graphite 13, 2022

LETTER FROM THE EDITORS

They say the streets flow, tenderly, nocturnal. The lights aren’t so vivid that they unsheathe the secret, the secret that the men who come and go know well, as they are all within that secret and nothing is to be accomplished in its shattering yeah... on the contrary, it’s so sweet to guard it and share it only with that chosen fellow. If each one would say in any given moment, in one word, what he thinks, that four letter word—WISH, would form a luminous scar, a constellation, older, and yet more alive, than the others. And that constellation would be like a searing pendulum inside of night’s vast abdomen or better yet, like Geminis that for the first time, face each other, eye-to-eye, and embrace, now, forever.

Suddenly the river-street populates with thirsting beings. They walk, they lurk, they seek. They exchange glances, steal smiles. Surprising pairs form...

TRANSLATED BY F. GARCIA RODRIGUEZ

There are bends and benches, shady corners deep and indefinable in form. and gaping holes of blinding light, and doors which head to the slightest pry.

The river-street momentarily deserts. Then, it upstreams even itself wishing to start anew. A paralyzing moment idles, the whole world eager, like the heart between two spasms. But a new pulse, a new flutter brings parched souls to the river-street anew. They crisscross, entangle, and levitate skimming the soil’s surface.

They swim on foot—miraculous— and no one would suggest it’s not a strut. They are losÁngeles Having touched down on earth having taken invisible freeways. They reside in the Pacific, the sky’s mirror, in vessels of smoke and shadow, to fuse themselves with, and be mistook for mortals, to cranial-dip between the thighs of women, to allow the feverish other’s hands to track their bodies down, and that other bodies seek them out until they are found, like how two lips shut to form one mouth, to exhaust their pent-up mouths, to untie their fiery tongues, to recite the songs, the swears, the vulgarities, through which man rehearses the archaic mystery of flesh, blood, and desire.

They have names of course, divinely simple— Dick or John, or Marvin or Louis. In nothing but their beauty are they discernible from mortals. They walk, they lurk, they seek. They exchange glances, steal smiles. Surprising pairs form.

They grin maliciously as they savor the shaft of the hotel elevator, upwardly flexing their measured ascent. On their naked bodies are celestial marks: omens, stars, jade runes— which they flaunt on the bed, drowning in the pillows, which even here recall, for a moment, the clouds. But they close their eyes to succumb to the novelty of their unexplored incarnation, and when they sleep, they dream not with the Angels but with the mortals.

LosAngeles,California,1936.