100 Refutations | Panama | Poetry | Spanish
June, 2018I make verses in the air
they crackle toward the infinite prophecy.
Crackling.
Crackling.
I dance
building with my feet
a trampoline of clouds
I twirl like a ram
now I am a she-Christ
now, navigator
now face up
now about to expire
My wings levelled
in
a dive
Yesterday, again, I leapt from the Bridge
of the Americas
today I stare at my naked feet
upon the earth
I write plummeting parachute poems
I will not return to the place of butterflies
Lil Marie Herrera is an award-winning journalist and poet. Her poetry collections include Metaldevoz (2006); Niño, mango, guayacán (2006); Todo en regla (2009); Di versos, poemas traviesos (2011); Tenaz Pepita Nador (2011); Juegos Mentales (2015); and Chifladuras (cada loco con su verso) (2015). Her many awards include the Esther María Osses Ministry of Labor Poetry Prize (2006); the Amelia Denis Icaza Municipal Poetry Prize (2006); the León A. Soto Municipal Poetry Prize (2006, 2014); the Women’s Poetry Prize: Voices, Images, and Testimonies (2009); The Hersilia Ramos de Argote National Prize for Children’s Poetry (2011, 2014, 2015); and the Esther María Osses National Prize for Child and Youth Poetry (2015). For more information, see the Panamanian poetry blog Afinidades Electivas.
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.
Copyright (c) Lil Marie Herrera. English translation copyright (c) Lina M. Ferreira C.-V., 2018.