Tomás Modesto Galán is a Dominican writer and cultural activist. It is part of the board of the Bronx Hispanic Festival. Since 2018 he is president of the first Association of Dominican Writers in the United States. His book Amor en bicicleta y otros poemas won first prize in the 2014 Letras de Ultramar Literary Contest. His first novel Los Cuentos de Mount Hope was published in 1995 and has been recognized as one of the best novels of the last 20 years in the Dominican Republic according to the critical anthology of Avelino Stanley. In 2015, he was awarded the Poet of the Year prize by the Américas Poetry Festival of New York. His most recent publication is Góngora en motoconcho (Artepoetica Press, 2021).
Amor en bicicleta
El suplicio le venda ojos al condenado del placer, los amantes proveen clavículas, migrañas, no administran el tiempo, la noche desentierra un orfelinato, incrimina la otra cara del vacío.
Diariamente caen alfileres sobre su claridad, bombas de humo, Incienso. Una bicicleta rueda sobre la tarde en busca del amor.
Se perdieron puertas, dura demasiado el sol, tardan lunas los cuadernos, vuelven más estrellas a convocar el salto, la jornada de escondernos acaricia una brújula descompuesta.
El empeño en destruirnos inaugura suplicios, alumbra sus cadenas, un surgimiento de hogueras sordas devuelve un perro desnudo y la mañana desenrosca bastones para caminar a la redonda, rodar entre corredores ciegos, o niños que bordean un río irrespirable.
A mitad de la razón alguien dinamita el silencio.
Desaparece devorando un piano, sorteados por una libertad absurda y esa lucha con la luz que los vuelve harapientos, rabiosamente inútiles.
Hoy perdieron los pies, más tarde el amor consumirá el hígado, después masticará los restos de un pulmón risible pero no amedrentarán los rayos taciturnos de una bicicleta desventurada que ha perdido el rumbo.
Love on a Bicycle
Torture bandages the eyes of damned pleasure, the lovers provide clavicles, migraines, they do not keep track of time, the night unearths an orphanage, denounces the other face of emptiness.
Pins fall daily over her clarity, bombs of smoke, incense. A bicycle circles the afternoon in search of love.
Doors were lost, the sun stays too long, notebooks take moons, More stars return to summon the leap, the journey of hiding ourselves caresses a broken compass.
The determination to self-destruct incites torture, gives light to its chains, a surge of deaf bonfires returns a naked dog and the morning loosens canes in order to walk the round, circling through blind corridors, or children who surround an anxious river.
In the middle of reason, someone explodes the silence.
It disappears devouring a piano, negotiated by an absurd freedom and that battle with the light that makes them ragged, rabidly useless.
Today they lost their feet, later on love will consume the liver, then it will chew the remains of a laughable lung, but they will not intimidate the distant beams of an unfortunate bicycle that has lost its way.
Translated by Pilar González