I cry, each poem is just that, a cry: we are in the presence of a genuine voice, an authentic howl, if it is possible to announce an identity-based pain that unites all generations of Cubans born or aborted after 1959, on an island that is smoke and a summary of human ruin. A standard-bearer of the abyss, this book is a unanimous howl, a reflection of death in the national mirror.
Rafael Vilches Proenza
I began writing Fighting Days at Guillermo Irizarri's house, while I was reading Deuda Natal by Mara Pastor and a boxing match was playing in the background. I had gone there to seek refuge from the already long list of detainees that has been with me since July 2021.
Two summers are woven into the book, as are two loves: Cuba and Puerto Rico.
I had the honor of having the book published on that other island of my soul, of setting foot there, of reading that cry of solidarity and love that is the poem Let It Tremble.
"You make very good use of the retrospective display of Facebook entries for your account: their journey from Z to... origin? You perfectly understand their function/format as a diary interspersed with an autograph (and yes, I'm referring to those notebooks of memories that used to fill our student desks at the end of each school year).
You know how to thresh the chaff, woman! Because you don't linger on thin exhibitionism. You propel, yes, with the heterodoxy/glossy of comments, the polysemy of poems; and with those, you gift us not only the gossipmonger's scratch, but the gold of feedback (a dream of so many writers in search of their reader). You update and recast the pragmatic suspension of the web (with its summaries in plain sight) with the suspense about your life; and
With luck, you'll let us read a few—but only a few—of those pearls afterward, as if we'd clicked and you gave in, saying yes/saying no, after promiscuous retries. The fracture, the flirtatious slyness (the absence of... everything?) is thus a symbol both of the supposedly farcical, alienated hologram? of the virtual, and of the split or discontinuity of the individual, of bad memory, of poetic mystery and its fissure, of the eternally fleeting object of desire."
Jamila Medina
To purchase, Welcome to Facebook , (original work of poetry), Letras Cubanas, Havana, 2022, send me a message. I still have copies.
Here I was searching for origins and hope. It was a travel book, and it's my little search for origins and hope at the end of the road.
With illustrations by Juan Karlos Echeverria.
I still have some copies, write me if you want one.
All the tired goddesses (original work of poetry), Ediciones La Luz, Holguín, 2011.
Coming soon, PDF available.
The girls on the bridge are usually fragile , (original work of poetry) Reina del Mar Editores, 2005.