Five poems from Animal Muerto by Sebastián Gómez Matus Translated from Spanish by Ian U Lockaby

---

Regression 

The first day after returning to my town
I slept in a tree.

The second day back to the moon
I slept in a crater.

The third day after returning to the world
I slept upon stone.

My sister wasn’t living where she said.

My parents had been dead all my life.

I went to see my friends and they were doing

exactly the same as when I left.

 

 

 

 

 

 

1 2 1 1 1 7

On the banks of a river
the sun stretches its blindness 
over water’s blindness.

This time it assembles a skeleton
while stones fix their sight

so intently their silence becomes instructive.

The femur doesn’t fit the sacrum.
In other words:
The femur doesn’t reach the sacred.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 9 3 1 7
The reality between grass and dew
infinitely reflects the morning:
tiny lucha libre philosophers
living in a house where one always 
feels the sensation of high seas.
There they fight but with little violence
imparting lessons of Kerényi
to insects passing by.
Little white-stemmed plants sprout
soft as a mental drizzle.
This rain is a draft 
of the rain that will fall later,
residue of what we call
by its name without an answer.
The leaves release a mountain 
of parachutes into circles.
Drenched children wait
hoping the water won’t wash away the lines
marking out the large area, traced 
as if to erect a house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

A Sculpture


You let the water run ten days.
You watch the water run ten days.

When you have it up to your nose
you swim through the house to close the nozzle.

You confirm that it’s well-sealed up.
There are no leaks.

 

 

 

 

 

 

From The Sea 

I miss the buses.

Seagulls fly over the day
like a haphazard epitaph.

The emptiness we call sky 
doesn’t offer any total view:
a parachute to land inside.

Sand gathers the day
and from all the footprints makes another beach
nearly identical to the day before.

When the water line drops
the sand looks at me and I remember the love
I saw sleeping believing it dead.

I let the sea go, 
let the sky be seen
as part of the water and the water
part of what.

 

 

 

 

---

Regresión

El primer día de vuelta a mi pueblo
dormí en un árbol. 

El segundo día de regreso a la luna
dormí en un cráter.

El tercer día de vuelta al mundo
dormí sobre piedra.

Mi hermana no vivía donde dijo.

Mis padres llevaban toda la vida muertos.

Fui donde mis amigos y estaban haciendo

exactamente lo mismo que cuando me fui.

 

 

 

 

 

 

121117

A orillas de un río 
el sol estira su ceguera
sobre la ceguera del agua

Esta vez arma una osamenta
mientras las piedras miran fijo
 
tanto que su silencio es instructivo.
 
El fémur no calza con el sacro.
En otras palabras:
El fémur no alcanza con el sacro.

 

 

 

 

 

 

2 9 3 1 7

La realidad entre el pasto y el rocío
refleja infinitamente la mañana:
diminutos luchadores libres filósofos
viven en una casa donde siempre
se tiene la sensación de altamar.
Allí luchan sin mucha violencia
para impartir clases de Kerényi
a insectos que pasan de largo.
Brotan plantas de tallo blanco
suaves como una garúa mental.
Esta lluvia es un borrador
de la lluvia que caerá después,
residuo de lo que llamamos
por su nombre sin respuesta.
Las hojas sueltan en círculos
una montaña de paracaídas.
Los niños empapados esperan
que el agua no borre las líneas
del área grande, trazadas
como para levantar una casa.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Una Escultura

Dejo correr el agua diez días.
Miro correr el agua diez días.

Cuando la tengo hasta la nariz
nado por la casa a cortar la llave.

Compruebo el sellado.
No hay filtraciones.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Desde El Mar

pierdo los buses.

Las gaviotas sobrevuelan el día
como epitafio aleatorio.

El vacío que llamamos cielo
no suple ninguna mirada total:
un paracaídas para dar pie adentro.

La arena reúne el día
y de todas las huellas hace otra playa
casi igual al día anterior.

Cuando baja la línea de la superficie
la arena me mira y recuerdo el amor
que vi dormir creyéndolo muerto.

Dejo que el mar se vaya,
que el cielo sea mirada
parte del agua y el agua 
parte de qué.

 

 

 

 

Translator’s Note

These poems are drawn from Sebastián’s debut collection Animal Muerto [Dead Animal], published in 2021 by Editorial Aparte in Chile, a book built on the winding logic and shifting syntax of dreams. These are poems that insist on a reorientation towards how we make meaning of our days—and how we mark them. If by numbers, what are the spiritual connotations, and where are the synchronicities? If by memories or acts, what about those of dream life? These poems are attuned to a metaphysical experience of the daily, but stay grounded in the palpable, too—Santiago and its surrounds, water(s), home(s), family. They are like memories becoming aware of themselves and considering their own futures. One could read these poems as chronicles of attempts, as Sebastián writes elsewhere in the book, to “live life posthumously.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

---

Sebastián Gómez Matus (Osorno, Chile, 1987) is a poet and translator based in Santiago. His first book Animal Muerto (2021), received honorable mention in the Juegos Florales Gabriela Mistral 2019, among Chile’s most important poetry awards, and in 2018 he won the Oscar Castro National Prize for Poetry for his Curso de Portugués. He received the Beca de Creación Literaria of the CNCA (Consejo Nacional de la Cultura y las Artes) in 2021 for his book Cómo Imaginé Bagdad y Cómo la Encontré, published last year in Mexico by Dharma Books Publishing. In 2020, he digitally published Po, La Constitución Borrada, an erasure of the Chilean constitution. His translations include Fin del Verano, by Chika Sagawa (2020); Mi Felicidad, Poemas escogidos (2021) by Mary Ruefle; El Descenso de Alette, by Alice Notley (2024); El Apocalipsis Árabe, by Etel Adnan (2024), and Las Lágrimas de Picasso, by Wong May (2025). He received Switzerland’s Looren Translation House Grant in 2023. In the United States, his work is published or forthcoming in Washington Square Review, Arkansas Quarterly, and Firmament, by Sublunary Editions. He works as a secondary-school literature and language teacher and contributes as a literary and cultural critic in various Chilean newspapers. 

Ian U Lockaby is a poet and translator who lives in New Orleans. He is the author of Defensible Space/if a crow— (Omnidawn, 2024) and A Seam of Electricity (Ghost Proposal, 2025). He is the translator of Gardens, by Chilean poet Carlos Cociña (Cardboard House Press, 2021) and Probable Synonyms of the Word Sololoy by Mexican poet Diana Garza Islas (Carrion Bloom, 2025). Recent work appears in journals such as Circumference Magazine, Kenyon Review, West Branch, Fence, Works & Days, and Denver Quarterly. He edits mercury firs, an online journal of poetry and translation.

---

26 June 2025