IN/FIDELITY
ONE POEM BY JANIL UC TUN
Art by eylül doğanay
Translator’s Note
Born and raised near Ticul, Yucatán, Janil Uc Tun is a writer who, like his narrator (Francisca Rojas), straddles two cultures and two worlds. Janil’s experimental book Gentry: Or the Name of a Tree with No Memory (Original title: Gentry: o el nombre de un árbol que no tiene memoria) addresses the displacement of original communities in the Yucatán, the situation farmworkers face under a system that dates to colonial times, the pillaging of fragile ecosystems in the Yucatán Peninsula, and the gentrification of the region. Gentry addresses forced migration due to gentrification and "land grabs" that have required entire communities to uproot from their ancestral soil to relocate into cities.
Gentry was recipient of the prestigious “LXIII Juegos Florales Nacionales de Ciudad del Carmen” Award for Poetry in 2022. Janil Uc Tun is also a dramaturgist and won the 2022 Premio Nacional de Dramaturgia Joven “Gerardo Mancebo del Castillo Trejo” Award, a Latin American prize given annually to a young playwright. Uc Tun’s role in Yucatecan arts and letters is expansive, ranging from his collaborations with regional theater troupes to his role as a lecturer in Literatura y Cultura Maya at the Universidad Autónoma de Yucatán. Though the first poems of Gentry are written from a child’s POV, the book also references centuries of Mexican (and Indigenous Mexican) history, from La Calzada de los Muertos to Lomas de Montejo, and from Plutarco Elías Calles to Justo Sierra O'Reilly.
Gentry is an exquisitely crafted book, with sections structured to follow both the Maya Calendar and Dante’s Divine Comedy. Janil’s poetry and dialogue read like scenes from a play, and there is humor in his work even as he explores a tragic legacy that includes the suppression of communities, languages, and cultures. Janil’s poetic pacing and dramatic timing are impeccable as he addresses gentrification, colonialism, farmworkers’ (and factory workers’) rights, human trafficking, and the battle to preserve Indigenous ways of life and rural communities in this lyric bildungsroman.
—Allison A. deFreese
ONE POEM
Translated from Spanish by Allison A. DeFreese
The cemetery
To Pedro Uc, for all the times
we weren’t defeated.
I
My father is stewing in the same sewer
where I make vegetable soup
his eye sockets emptied out
I went to see if he was still buried
I got home very late
(because late at night is when the giants sleep)
and told my mother I didn't want to move to the city if we couldn’t take his bones.
my father is the dark vegetable soup at God's snack time
and I am the spoon that slides into his toothless mouth
that night, my mother went to the cemetery
and returned with my father's bones on her back
I didn’t have to ask when we were leaving.
II
It was easy to get used to the thirteen-hour shifts at the textile factory
and to not peeing for thirteen hours
because I was always thirsty
the white plastic smock I wore had someone else’s name on it
but fit me perfectly
it had belonged to a woman named Pamela
who used to sit beside
my mother, who had a wart growing on her left eyelid
the other women at the factory found Pamela’s body
with eight inches of soil on top
by the highway that runs opposite the back of the plant
they were happy for her family
because they didn’t have to look for her very long
and she could still be clearly identified as Pamela
then they notified her mother
but when her mother arrived, since they had left Pamela naked
dogs were crowding around the body
my mother bought the smock at the market
with Pamela’s name still stitched on the pocket
and now I, Francisca Rojas, borrow her name for thirteen hours a day
standing next to my mother
I sprout in an asphalt desert
like the wart that continues growing on her left eyelid.
III
We buried Doña Esther next to her nine stillborn children
next to her husband who lost an eye while riding his black horse
don’t die in town, my mother told Doña Esther
the town is no longer yours
come live with us in the city of factory workers
and Doña Esther replied that they brought her there on horseback
as a little girl
from a town that no longer exists
and that without her horse
and without her one-eyed husband, who lies dead beneath the soil
there was nowhere else for her to go
Doña Esther never went further north or east
she only circled an invisible corral of green speedbumps
and dead leaves
she never tried to leave, even with her horse and her one-eyed husband dead
and snoring into his fists
spitting feverish worms all over
his body
my mother made up a lullaby about Doña Esther
we sang it to her sometimes when I was a child
and called her Mother Esther.
IV
When we get to the city
we start the month with a wake for my grandmother
I told my mother we should bury her in the cemetery
but my mother didn’t want to
and put her in the same drawer where she keeps my father's bones
in San Antonio Pich
we made green crosses out of wood
and placed flowers
around the edges of the graves
until the graves blended in with the grass that covers them
that's why my mother says
the earth whispers the names of our dead.
ONE POEM
By Janil Uc Tun
El cementerio
A Pedro Uc,
por las veces que no fuimos
vencidos.
I
Mi padre se cocina en la misma alcantarilla
donde preparo una sopa de verduras
vaciadas las cuencas de sus ojos
fui a comprobar que seguía bajo la tierra
regresé a casa ya muy tarde
(porque tarde es cuando los gigantes duermen)
y le dije a mi madre que no quería ir a la ciudad sin llevarnos sus huesos
mi padre es una sopa de verduras negras en la merienda de Dios
y yo soy la cuchara que se escurre entre su boca sin dientes
esa noche mi madre fue al cementerio
y trajo los restos de mi padre en su espalda
no fue necesario preguntar cuándo nos íbamos.
II
No fue difícil acostumbrarme a trabajar trece horas en la maquiladora ni
siquiera a no orinar en ese tiempo
porque siempre tenía sed
el traje de plástico blanco que me puse tenía otro nombre
pero me entraba exacto
era de una mujer llamada Pamela
que se sentó al lado de mi madre
durante el mismo tiempo que lleva creciendo una verruga en su párpado izquierdo
otras trabajadoras encontraron su cuerpo
en una carretera que da contraria a la nuca de la maquiladora
con veinte centímetros de tierra encima
sintieron alivio por la familia porque fue poco el tiempo en que la estuvieron buscando
y todavía se identificaba claramente que era Pamela
luego avisaron a su madre
pero cuando llegó ya la habían dejado desnuda
y los perros se amontonaban alrededor de ella
mi madre compró su traje en el mercado
todavía con el nombre de Pamela cocido a su pecho y yo
ahora, Francisca Rojas, uso su nombre trece horas al día
parada al lado de mi madre mientras germino
en un desierto de asfalto como la verruga que crece en su párpado izquierdo.
III
Enterramos a doña Esther al lado de sus nueve hijos no natos
y de su esposo que perdió un ojo montado en su caballo negro
mi madre le dijo que no debía morirse en el pueblo
porque el pueblo ya no era suyo
le ofreció venirse con nosotras a la ciudad de las maquiladoras
y ella respondió que la trajeron a caballo cuando era niña
desde un pueblo que ya no existe y que no hay adonde
vaya sin su caballo o sin su esposo de un solo ojo muerto
bajo la tierra
doña Esther nunca se alejó más allá al norte o al oriente solo
daba círculos en una jaula invisible de estoperoles verdes
que sostenían hojas muertas
no intentó irse ni muerto el caballo ni muerto el marido de un solo ojo
que roncaba con los puños y que escupía gusanos de
calentura sobre su cuerpo
a doña Esther mi madre le escribió una canción de cuna
que a veces le cantábamos cuando era niña
y le decíamos madre Esther.
IV
Cuando llegamos a la ciudad
empezamos el mes velando a mi abuela
le dije a mi madre que la pongamos en un cementerio
pero no lo quiso
y la puso en el mismo cajón donde guarda los huesos de mi padre
en San Antonio Pich
de madera se hacían cruces verdes
y siempre poníamos flores para adornar los
contornos de las tumbas hasta que se confundan
con la hierba que las cubre
es por eso que mi madre dice
que la tierra susurra los nombres de nuestros muertos.
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Allison A. deFreese is currently collaborating on translations with several Yucatecan poets. Her translations of Janil Uc Tun's poems also appear or are forthcoming in Latin American Literature Today, Michigan Quarterly Review, and Los Angeles Review.