Rito Ramón Aroche (Havana, 1961) has published Material entrañable (1994), Puerta siguiente (1996), Cuasi II (1998), Cuasi I (2002), El libro de loscolegios reales, Del rio que durando se destruye and Andamios (all 2005), Historias que confunden (2008), Las fundaciones (2011), Una vida magenta (2014), Cambios en un viaje de regreso (2015) and Límites de Alcanía (2016). Two of his books are now in the process of being edited: Libro de imaginar I and La estación del año, which belongs to the series Lugar llamado Hölgan. He works as a critic and essayist. In 2006, he won the Gaceta de Cuba poetry award.
Anne James has edited and solicited work for Ploughshares, St. Petersburg Review and Zymbol, the latter of which she founded in 2012. She also served as Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club from 2012-2016. She now works as a freelance editor, literary agent, translator and publishing consultant. She can be reached at annejjames@gmail.com.
Laura Contreras was born in Cuban in 1995 and is currently pursuing undergraduate degrees in history and Chinese at Havana University. In 2017, she conducted tours for Chinese and Costa Rican visitors to Cuba. Contreras worked as an English-Spanish translator for UNEAC at the International Poetry Festival of Havana, also in 2017. She was employed as a Chinese-Spanish translator in a Cuban Factory for a company based in Shanghai in 2018. Contreras currently works as a private Spanish tutor and teacher.
Yma Johnson is a first generation Sierra Leonean immigrant who began her writing career in 1996 as a journalist in Puerto Rico. She has written articles on topics ranging from the criminalization of the mentally ill to Japanese swordsmanship. She is a master’s candidate in creative writing at Eastern Michigan University where she taught rhetoric and composition. She also taught a poetry at a women's prison. Yma won 1st place in the 2012 Current Magazine Fiction and Poetry Contest as well as an honorable mention from 2014 Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, the St. Petersburg Review, The Encyclopedia Project Vol. 3, an anthology of experimental literature. Her fiction was also anthologized in, “Cthulhu Lies Dreaming,” short story collection of works inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.
Anne James has edited and solicited work for Ploughshares, St. Petersburg Review and Zymbol, the latter of which she founded in 2012. She also served as Treasurer of the New England Poetry Club from 2012-2016. She now works as a freelance editor, literary agent, translator and publishing consultant. She can be reached at annejjames@gmail.com.
Laura Contreras was born in Cuban in 1995 and is currently pursuing undergraduate degrees in history and Chinese at Havana University. In 2017, she conducted tours for Chinese and Costa Rican visitors to Cuba. Contreras worked as an English-Spanish translator for UNEAC at the International Poetry Festival of Havana, also in 2017. She was employed as a Chinese-Spanish translator in a Cuban Factory for a company based in Shanghai in 2018. Contreras currently works as a private Spanish tutor and teacher.
Yma Johnson is a first generation Sierra Leonean immigrant who began her writing career in 1996 as a journalist in Puerto Rico. She has written articles on topics ranging from the criminalization of the mentally ill to Japanese swordsmanship. She is a master’s candidate in creative writing at Eastern Michigan University where she taught rhetoric and composition. She also taught a poetry at a women's prison. Yma won 1st place in the 2012 Current Magazine Fiction and Poetry Contest as well as an honorable mention from 2014 Glimmer Train's Very Short Fiction Contest. Her work has appeared in Cosmonauts Avenue, the St. Petersburg Review, The Encyclopedia Project Vol. 3, an anthology of experimental literature. Her fiction was also anthologized in, “Cthulhu Lies Dreaming,” short story collection of works inspired by H.P. Lovecraft.
The Old Man
The Container
The Old Man
A strong pain pressed on the entrance of his stomach. He tells you: I would benefit from noni. He sweats. If not, then clay. He scratches. He sweats. Clay—he tells you—avoiding at his age to say shit. And what his hands leave on earth, stratum. They leave, all along the sidewalk (on the parterre) as he talks. Malangas that invade the vagrants’ space. The caisimon among the invaded bums and invasive malangas. Water (a lot of it) all along the pavement. Grass, on the parterre. No longer able to stop himself from obsessive ideas. Ideas, that mark him. The old man, on the parterre.
The Container
Does detritus matter? Or the luminosity of this tundra? Where purifications would settle down. And dust on the road, or mud. Would the inhabitants rummage around? The smoke undone. Flies. Because the carrion bird had been seen circling, and dogs, wandering around these days. Do dogs rummage as well? Hey, here they toss tractors and trucks—lumps. The scraps? Don’t come at night. People live in here. From here… well. And bags of bottles. Cans. Do they live? The world is recyclable, oh God. The world that you created?
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