Selections from Ballads of Sweet Jim

Selections from Ballads of Sweet Jim Ana María Moix (bio) Translated from Spanish by Daniel Byronson Keywords pistol, death, dream, religion, ghosts, paranormal, lives I would have liked to see myself going into the little room at the Café Boscán enraged and pistol in hand looking for his face facing some other face among the tables. He spoke wet, moldy words. I'd have stuck the barrel of the pistol to his forehead and, sublime as he ever was, he would even thank me for granting him the iron's cool touch in the final moments of his life. Midnight sparrowhawks rose up, shaken, from the tables. Halfway through the foxtrot a shot rang out and when the lights came up they saw me, kissing the blood that ran across the shadow's face. It tasted bittersweet and when I awoke from my dream I said so. Because although I thought about it often, I'd never let myself suffer that much. That's why, each night when I went to bed, I concentrated on the event in order to dream about it. In the morning, when I woke, the shadow's thick blood weighed on my lips. + I found him resting his forehead on the pastry shop window and in his white, unbelievable eyes, I recognized him: it was God and I was about to say to him: You look older since last time. But he seemed so sad that I made like I didn't know him. + I shut the door. I descended the stairs. I bumped into the watchman and the silence was broken. With a gesture I begged him not to say it, and he said it: They're not coming today, miss; it's not their shift. And I wasn't even around the corner when I heard him telling the story to the tavern bouncer: That girl is crazy. Every day, at twelve, she goes down to let the dead in the front door. I had to hold back Uncle Jacobo who wanted to challenge him to a duel. Uncle Jacobo died before '36 and he wasn't used to watchmen's bad manners toward young ladies. End Page 156 + César Vallejo, they're on their way with sour milk and a pinch of salt. Mad heartless exiles we found each other, nobody'd say where, brother, and even so, even before cities existed, you and I knew it was easy to die on the tracks. While the fields bloomed in Connecticut, Florida, California, a thousand lost angels waited in the desert. + The first corpse wore black and didn't seem to be sleeping. I felt a great fear and a strange passion for silence. The grave wasn't very deep, it fit only the coffin and my body. I felt the falling earth strike my back and I still remember—when I try to comprehend that it's not true, that I wasn't there—that I opened the buried corpse's eyes and in them I saw the sea. Credit: Ana María Moix A imagen y semejanza © Ana María Moix 1982, y Herederos de Ana María Moix Published with permission of Agencia Literaria Carmen Balcells End Page 157 Ana María Moix ana maría moix, born in Barcelona in 1947, wrote novels, stories, poetry, children's books, and contributed journalism to popular magazines. From 1969 to 1973, she published two novels, a collection of stories, and three works of poetry, including Baladas del Dulce Jim (Ballads of Sweet Jim). In the later 1970s, she wrote cultural columns for the Spanish magazines Vindicación Feminista and Destino. She continued to write narrative prose, including the collection of short stories Las virtudes peligrosas (translated into English as Dangerous Virtues). Moix's abiding concern for the imagination and for fantasy life stands out in her work, as does her investigation of gender roles and lesbian desire. Daniel Byronson daniel byronson is a translator from Spanish and poet. He was raised in Minneapolis, MN, where he now resides. His reviews have appeared in Rain Taxi. By day, he works in immigration law. Copyright © 2024 The Massachusetts Review, Inc.