THE CLEAR WATER by Sara Torres, translated from the Spanish by Sofía Monzón

THE CLEAR    WATER

the simple    water

that red fig of a womb

abundant in itself

one fold after another

ventricle

and then    another turn

and a new profundity

It is true    it happened

pounded to the brink

the mark that was left

                             is clear

history won’t deny it

writing records now

it is true    it happened

touched because the body

was in its solitude

it surrenders

moved because it was

in its solitude    cautious

its life prolonged

by love

the mark that was left

Author and translator bios:

Sara Torres is a Spanish poet, novelist, and scholar. She is the author of the poetry collections La otra genealogía (Torremozas, 2014), Conjuros y cantos (La Bella Varsovia, 2016), Phantasmagoria (La Bella Varsovia, 2019), El ritual del baño (La Bella Varsovia, 2021), and Deseo de perro (Letraversal, 2023). She has also published the novels Lo que hay (Reservoir Books, 2022), which received the Premio Javier Morote for Best New Author, and La seducción (Reservoir Books, 2024). Recognized as one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Spanish literature, her poetry is minimalist, affectively charged, and richly sensorial.

Sofía Monzón is a poet, literary translator, and assistant professor of Translation and Interpretation at Utah State University. Her work explores the intersections of language, affect, and cultural transfer across multilingual contexts. She is the Spanish translator of Jane Austen’s Complete Poems / Poesía completa (Valparaíso, 2025) and Sharon Olds’s One Secret Thing / Una cosa secreta (Valparaíso, 2026), and the author of the poetry collections Los afectos multilingües (Valparaíso, 2024) and Alas (Editorial Club Universitario, 2019). Her bilingual writing and translations have appeared in venues such as The Polyglot Magazine, Exchanges, Transcultural, and Connections.

© Sara Torres, 2019. Translation © by Sofía Monzón. All rights reserved.

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