The Manifest

Author

By Olga Nolla

Publish Date

Feb. 26, 2014

Olga Nolla

I love being a woman
to be forty years old
to be mistress of my life
to fall in love with men
to easily forget men
to write my poems
to cook aromatic dishes
to fix exquisite traditional dishes
to talk about hunger with my men
to dress sensually with lace and silks
to undress sensually
to wear red shoes
to grow my hair real long
to paint my toenails
to dream of the novels I plan to write
to see movies made by women
to listen as the rain collides with the air
to listen to thunder
to run the waves in my car inflamed
and to give you the apple, Adam
eat it, eat it.

— translated by Paula Vega

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Olga Nolla was born in 1938 in Río Piedras, Puerto Rico, to a prominent Puerto Rican family. Her father was an agronomist and her mother a poet. She graduated in 1960 from Manhattanville College and then returned to Puerto Rico where she married and had two children. She became a journalist and then a professor at what is now Universidad Metropolitana, where she taught Spanish, art history, and humanities. A committed feminist, she participated in the Federation of Puerto Rican Women and was editor of its magazine, Palabra de Mujer, in 1976–1977. She is the author of the historical novels El Castillo de la Memoria and Rosas de Papel and several volumes of poetry. She died in 2001 while visiting her children in New York. “The Manifest” appeared in Paula Vega’s translation in the anthology These Are Not Sweet Girls: Poetry by Latin American Women, published by White Pine Press. The poem is reprinted by permission.