Magdalena Arias Vásquez
Amen
There was a box of Marlboros on the floor,
On the couch there were sounds like spirals
you picked them up, gave birth to a flame,
spun out of the tightly wound melodies of youths
gnarled with robberies: yours first
like a tiny sunrise in a pitch black room
mine second, with the cyclical rhythm
of private property taken like a public commodity,
saint they called the man who tied you to this rhythm
and saint was the name you called him when he burned me.
There was a box of Marlboros on the floor,
On the couch there were sounds like spirals
you picked them up, gave birth to a flame,
spun out of the tightly wound melodies of youths
gnarled with robberies: yours first
like a tiny sunrise in a pitch black room
mine second, with the cyclical rhythm
of private property taken like a public commodity,
saint they called the man who tied you to this rhythm
and saint was the name you called him when he burned me.
--
Magdalena Arias Vásquez is a poet and translator based in NYC. She is a recent graduate from Williams College, where she majored in English and French and spent a lot of her time reading and avoiding the freezing Massachusetts temperatures. A lot of her work centers questions of memory in Latin America, anchored by experiences of American intervention and dictatorship in Panama. When she's not writing, she spends her time taking photographs, making matcha and giving her friends an absurd amount of book recommendations.
Magdalena Arias Vásquez is a poet and translator based in NYC. She is a recent graduate from Williams College, where she majored in English and French and spent a lot of her time reading and avoiding the freezing Massachusetts temperatures. A lot of her work centers questions of memory in Latin America, anchored by experiences of American intervention and dictatorship in Panama. When she's not writing, she spends her time taking photographs, making matcha and giving her friends an absurd amount of book recommendations.