By Fabrício Carpinejar, translated by Craig Epplin

I learned to turn knobs by opening a book. I learned to part my hair by combing its insides. The tracts I’d underline with a pencil are the letters I left for my family. I remember that remembering still persists in me.

I had to use a pocket-knife to unseal the pages. The unopened work spoke the absence of reading, and I felt pity seeing it repentant in the dust. I’d open it leaf by leaf, like one who peels fruit. The sum of letters flowing, rolls of the eye descending everywhere. No brakes on the velocity of my eyes. The book imitated a bus; to stop reading abruptly was like getting off at the wrong stop. Even today I don’t know whether imagination is my memory. I have the impression that in my childhood home there were no walls, only shelves. Each book was a fan standing in the bleachers. A fan waiting to be noticed. Rooting for our lives to bear fruit. Making well honed plays, asking for a sub, raising joys. I remember that remembering still persists in me.

I can say that the first neighborhood I died in was Dante’s Divine Comedy. Doré’s figures seemed so light next to that inferno. I know by heart the circles and hierarchy of sins. When uncomfortable, I’d use Dantesque precepts to designate a sentence. I cast out so many people from hell that I’m repentant. The book moved by touch, commotion. As with a polygraph, my breath was corrupted by the smell of new paper. When I discovered the Porto Alegre Book Fair, I didn’t understand. From one day to the next, the tents had sprung up. That surprised my solitude, like roots that suddenly raise the sidewalk. Writers circulated like country folk, their faces vulnerable, disguising the pride of a dust jacket, back cover and preface.

I remember that remembering still persists in me. I know the ritual of opening the windows slowly, the brochures on the table. I live the poem directly, without intermediaries.