100 Refutations | Panama | Poetry | Spanish
April, 2018Triumphs the light, capitalized by Edison
in the virginal bosom of the ‘ferry-boat.’
Skyscrapers, ‘Five-cents’ built,
how many projects crash
against your walls!
Within you they all roar, “Oh, great New York!”
The machinery and the hunger;
Statue of Liberty,
your light, is not for the South.
Cut off your arm.
Demetrio Korsi (1899-1957) studied both law and medicine but was unable to complete his studies for health-related reasons. In 1916, some of his poems were included in the seminal anthology, Parnaso Panameño, which instigated his renewed dedication to poetry.
Lina M. Ferreira C.-V. earned MFAs in creative nonfiction writing and literary translation from The University of Iowa. She is the author of Drown Sever Sing from Anomalous Press and Don’t Come Back from Mad River Books, as well as editor, with Sarah Viren, of the forthcoming anthology Essaying the Americas. Her fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and translation work has been featured in journals including Bellingham Review, Chicago Review, Fourth Genre, Brevity, Poets & Writers, and The Sunday Rumpus, among others. She won Best of the Net and Iron Horse Review’s Discovered Voices Award, has been nominated for two Pushcart Prizes, and is a Rona Jaffe fellow. She moved from Colombia to China to Columbus, Ohio to Richmond, Virginia, where she works as an assistant professor for Virginia Commonwealth University. Visit www.linawritesessays.com.
English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.