Have you ever wondered what makes a great piece of literature? Theorist Viktor Shlovsky believed that what a good story was was this, one that sticks around, plays with us, remains. However, to achieve that “long-lasting effect” in a work of art takes a specific set of devices. Like poetic speech. In our phonetic and […]

It came to my attention that I should focus on deepening my characters. As it goes, things should actually happen in a story. Funny, because I have known for a while that my personages spend a lot of time thinking. What’s wrong with thinking. That some people don’t want to read it. While everyone wants […]

It occurs to me that, were I to exaggerate, I have never needed to write. My writing comes from a place of want. I want to write. The struggle is, in this case, when one wants to write, that the quality of the work comes into question. Wanting, one invests time, writes from desire or […]

(. . . the story of a magician and a sorceress.)   The magician dashed off stage. He had been ridiculed for his fast-sprouting carnations, yet again. No more flower tricks at these open mics, he begrudged, they don’t care for nature fast or slow. Not to mention, being booed for your favorite spell sucked […]

Why not get into the holiday spirit with some lines? These I wrote while traveling this past summer. They feel warm to me, silly, carefree, and yearning.  Skim them, or sit on a word for a long time. They are here to keep you company. Personally I like the last one the best.     […]

The girl facing me was called Conchela. She had a heart-shaped face and a ponytail so tightly pulled back that it was hard to tell where her forehead ended and her hairline receded. She seemed real at first, but later I came to learn the only thing real about her was how children in Southeast […]

You have to be a poet to do just about anything.   You have to be a poet to translate another’s words. Only poets care enough about language to clearly convey one person’s thought to a different person’s understanding. Any other type of translator will blur the message. The best translators are then as transparent […]

Pasó así, Papá, y aunque pese, como lo viví te lo narro, en inglés:   Completely cut off from chance, no hope, only needs and responsibilities. I got home at 1 PM from working a four-hour at the language school. I would talk about that shift later in the day, when it came to answering […]

“At a distance, you only see my light / Come closer, and know that I am you” RUMI   Distance. Distance. Poem or essay or lyric on Distance. What are your thoughts, philosophical or not, on such a topic?   [Preamble concludes, deflate the diaphragm, let in air.]   That’s all there is between us, […]

For the prompt and for featuring my poem August 7th on the following article:   https://theamericanscholar.org/how-to-cheat/#.W3g0AcInbIU   ∀ Clothes pins, presumably, because of how these poems were pinned up one by one

For publishing the following story: http://www.acentosreview.com/august2018/ivan-brave.html   ∀Dime on quien andas by Letisia Cruz

∀ “El Cid” Rodrigo Diaz de Vivar   Nada, solamente un conjunto de nuevas palabras, un acervo de curiosidades, un acuerdo entre poetas, el ágape de anónimos, un afaníptero agobiado, y a esto vamos: ¿quien podrá componer un poema, un poema con estas palabritas?   Acervo – (un conjunto de bienes morales, culturales o materiales […]

∀ (Imagine: Bueyes del sol)   Quiero compartir esta próxima fase de mi aprendizaje con usted: una serie de ejercicios sobre la etimología castellana. Viene, en gran parte, o mejor dicho por una parte, a través de un libro llamado Breve Diccionario Etimológico de la Lengua Castellana, compuesta por Joan Corominas – un regalo de […]

∀ Art by Scott Gustafson ¶ Prompt from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write.   Cameron ends her Stakes chapter with a quote from Shakespeare’s character, Polonius: “To thine own self be true. And it must follow, as the night the day. Thou canst not then be false to any man.” Ergo, if you are […]

∀ Who better to symbolize the extrasensory than a writer who wrote extrasensory? JJ. ¶ Prompt from Julia Cameron’s The Right to Write.   ESP: perception (as in telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition) that involves awareness of information about events external to the self not gained through the senses and not deducible from previous experience — […]