João Filho

Salvador, 1996-2013

Of the accidents that sculpt her

in salt and light, these escarpments

are the designs with most heft,

the life that lies in wait for those without a map.

Up there on high, steep,

the city’s continuous curve,

a negative sinuosity,

opens in ravines and shores.

They called her amplitude portly,

I say saltpeter, wind off the Atlantic.

Paradox, it both preserves and rots.

Here is sung the old sea shanty.

In the church of Saint Benedict, mulatto angels,

in each cupola and pilaster

incline archangels and gospels

of a life less or more vast.

In the parish of Saint Anthony Beyond the Carmo

the colonial row houses teach nothing—

well yes, not-being, the bitter sound

of what, collapsing, corrupts.

All’s external? Not the core. Whoever

thinks they see the city, pleasantly delivered,

is deceived. On each corner colors scream

what you won’t have.

Precision descends only from above—

light on the alley slopes, maritime light,

light in flower that combines

the pain of the nude, the honey of the vine.

Chapel of St. Anthony’s Hospital

for Sister Dulce Pontes, the Good Angel of Bahia

You emerged from the century to enter

the dimension of love that is most clean:

to serve. From the clarity

that devotion imposes upon the pure.

The whole of life in a sole gesture:

to serve. You wake up extending yourself

(who sets you going?) beyond the circles

of our ordinary nights.

And what an instrument you molded!

in which discord, precarious king,

note by note condensed

into less gall and more lift.

The matter’s this: to grant the secret

and anonymous burden of many

the proportion of another promise.

When to implore alms is a marvel,

door to door the hand that plants.

Force of flower, it perfumes and cures

conforms to the water of its vase—

at times clay, at times shade—

It always awaits. See how precarious

is the handicraft that lends it contour.

Here are your bones, o sweetest.

When this dust illumines into gift.

Translator’s Note on “Chapel of St. Anthony’s Hospital.” With few resources, and by asking for funds, Sister (Irmã) Dulce Pontes almost single-handedly organized the construction of the hospital, which now daily serves thousands free of charge in Salvador, Bahia. She devoted her life to helping the poor (1914-1992, beatified 1991).

from The Vertical Source

I prayed, went out. The bus stop, packed. It was worse before,

I thought. What I’m doing or what I will do is burning me.

I know that woman who says, fatigued: "Hey there!" I reply "Hi."

I stay standing, squeezed in, but the voice, yes, insists

without letup (no, I’m not getting off at Saint Benedict)

it’s not going to let me go, the quarrel without cease.

In the bus’s stop-and-go, stuffed in, craving a breeze, I struggle

and I’m catching mysteries (cramp!) of the promise—

the already known, undeniable, refashioned as sighs

and dizziness, cardiac tumults

this fragile interval I explore (now changing hands)

without stratagems, my persistent tone of the maniac.

After the curve, the ocean unfurls, I desire the delirium

of this outburst that lifts the veil from everything,

I go down to the shore, the sea calling me. I don’t go. Staying

quiet, I breathe the absolute transparency.

Submerged Clarity

On your comfortable shoes,

a bit old and broken in,

the soot of cities

redesigns its map.

The shoes don’t come to me with nostalgia,

shadows, figures, phantasms.

No, the weight and profundity

of things won’t suffocate us.

From well-trodden paths

—avenues, alleys, plazas—

crowds’ tumults

in shoes’ soot.

Dust of the breathed-in world,

its corrosive tedium.

Yet they can’t escape the higher flights

of more daring ships.

In truth, nothing escapes.

Each isthmus is needed

against this blinding mist

to renew the clean gesture,

So don’t wash those shoes,

not because they register

so many itineraries, wanderings,

a thousand urban labyrinths, this

soot already a dwelling,

amorous cartography,

indicates lines, veins

of this submerged clarity.

Widen your pupils:

have patience to inspect

each segment of these stains,

stretch marks in the interstices,

handwriting of the diaphanous:

delivered through soot,

the clear sustenance

of the world’s fragile threads.

João Filho was born in Bom Jesus da Lapa, Bahia, Brazil, in 1975. He is the author of Encarniçado (“Cut Throat,” stories, 2004); Ao longo da linha amarela (“Along the Yellow LIne,” stories, 2009); A dimensão necessária (“The Necessary Dimension”, poems, 2014), which won the Alphonsus de Guimaraens Prize from Brazil’s National Library; and Dicionário amoroso de Salvador (“The Amorous Dictionary of Salvador, 2014). His work has been published in anthologies in Brazil, Argentina, Peru, and Spain, and has been translated into Spanish. 

Tiffany Higgins is the author of The Apparition at Fort Bragg (2016), an e-chapbook, winner of the Iron Horse Literary Review e-single contest for a long poem, selected by Camille Dungy. Her book And Aeneas Stares into Her Helmet (Carolina Wren Press, 2009) was selected by Evie Shockley as winner of the Carolina Wren Poetry Prize. Her poems appear in Poetry, Massachusetts Review, and other journals. Her translations of Rio poet Alice Sant’Anna’s poetry, Tail of the Whale, are available as a chapbook from Toad Press (2016).

https://issuu.com/ironhorsereview/docs/ft._bragg_trifecta