Opening Fear by Teresa Orbegoso

OPENING FEARpoems by Teresa Orbegosotranslated by Vania Milla / preface by Margarita Saona / foreword by Yaxkin Melchy / afterword by Silvia Goldman / illustrations by Louise Castillo

"I open a hole in my immortal cell, and I teach it how to die." Is this the voice of the poet, the voice of Teresa Orbegoso, speaking? Or are these the words of "my Cancer," the ominous character embodied in the verses of the poem? Opening Fear unravels impossible conversations of voices confronting the reader with pain, illness, death, and the wounds of history as much as those inscribed in the body. While these poems address the grave sickness experienced by the poet's body, this is not a self-involved exploration of one's own pain.

Without falling into the trap of the illness metaphors decried by Susan Sontag, Orbegoso weaves the existential threat of a potentially fatal disease with the social trauma of colonization, invoking in the same breath the consumption of Cancer, the ruins of Caral, Chichen Itza, and Teotihuacan, and the neoliberal politics of Latin American politicians of the 21st century. With lyrical dexterity, these poems guide their readers through frightening landscapes. The vitality of "those who strive to exist" does not shy away from accepting our mortality or even the sins of history. Opening the self to the horrors of violence, illness, and death, these verses manage to somehow rescue our humanity: "your heart, like breadcrumbs, will have scattered its dust in love all over our organs." Fears do not go away; they do not disappear as if by magic. But in Orbegoso's poetry, love and faith support us as we face them.

- Margarita Saona