Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat

The poems in Ojo en Celo / Eye in Heat by Margarita Pintado Burgos, skillfully translated from the Spanish by Alejandra Quintana Arocho, invite readers into a world where “[w]e learn to lie from early on,” both to others and to ourselves, about who we are, about our fears and desires. Deceit becomes a survival skill, one that the speaker, a Puerto Rican living in the continental United States and away from her beloved Caribbean Sea, has perfected to feel at home:

In this big, empty country, everything assumes a sadness so small, so foolish, so in the midst of immensity. So much so that no one sees it.

For Pintado, an eye in heat is an eye that sees beyond the limits of what is known, an eye that cannot lie, since the veil between what is perceived as real and what is real has been removed: “The eye rolls over the edge. / It doesn’t succumb to the lie. It doesn’t / surrender.”

In many of the poems, the speaker wavers between seeing and refusing to see, between feeling seen and being rendered invisible, while perceiving herself through the eyes of others:

She goes to the window
and closes her eyes
so she’s not seen

Here, the closing of the eyes suggests assimilation as dissolution of the self that renders the speaker unrecognizable to herself: “I don’t recognize you, little girl, and it’s strange, / not to know about you.” Living far away from “The island and its stone eyes,” from the sea she loves, and “among the damn lakes of Arkansas,” the speaker feels as if she “is no longer someone.” What she wants is to finally stop pretending to fit in, to finally see things as they truly are:

All this blue. After three years. After repeatedly lying to my colleagues and friends, saying lakes are the best reprieve after having lost the sea. It’s about time to come clean. With myself and with them. The truth is I hate lakes.