Mario Meléndez

Poetic Art



A cow grazes in our memory
blood escapes from the udders
the landscape is dead from a shot

The cow insists on its routine
its tail drives away boredom
the landscape revives in slow motion

The cow abandons the landscape
we continue hearing the lowing
our memory grazes now
in that immense loneliness

The landscape leaves our memory
the words change name
leave us weeping
on the blank page

The cow grazes now in the emptiness
the words are mounted on her
the language makes fun of us



Translated by Ron Hudson




Mario Meléndez (Linares, Chile, 1971), studied Journalism and Social Communication. Outstanding among his books are: “Autocultura y juicio” (with prologue from the National Prize of Literature, Roque Esteban Scarpa), “Apuntes para una leyenda” y “Vuelo subterráneo”. In 1993 he received the Municipal Prize of Literature in the Bicentennial of Linares. His poems have appeared in different revues of Hispano-American Literature as well as in National and Foreign anthologies. Mr. Meléndez has been invited to numerous Literary Conferences including: The First and Second Conferences of Latino-American Writers, organized by the Society of Writers of Chile (Sech), Santiago, 2001 and 2002, and the First International Conference of Amnesty and Solidarity with the People, Rome, Italy, 2003, at which he was named Member of Honor of the Academy of European Culture. At the beginning of 2005, he was published in the prestigious revues “Other Voices Poetry” and “Literati Magazine”. During that same year, he won the Harvest International Prize for best Spanish-language poem from the University of California Polytechnic, Pomona, in the United States. Parts of his work have been translated into Italian, English, French, Portuguese, Dutch, Romanian, Farsi and Catalan. Currently, he is working on the project “Fiestas of the Itinerant Book”.





Matthew Burkett Julie Clark Deidre Elizabeth Mario Melendez Patrick Frank