Issue Five Contents

4 poems
by Domingo Alfonso
2 poems
by Rito Ramón Aroche
3 poems
by Caridad Atencio
Flower Power
by Miguel Barnet
2 poems
by Pierre Bernet
2 poems
by Yanelys Encinosa Cabrera
4 poems
by Alberto Peraza Ceballos
3 poems
by Maria Liliana Celorrio
4 poems
by Felix Contreras
art
by Wally Gilbert
3 poems
by Georgina Herrera
3 poems
by Karel Leyva
3 poems
by Robert Manzano
2 poems
by Roberto Méndez Martínez
Grand Prismatic Spring
by Jamila Medina
2 poems
by Edel Morales
3 poems
by Alex Pausides
How Lucky They Are, The Normal Ones
by Roberto Fernandez Retamar
A Gust Disperses the Limits of Home
by Soleida Ríos
3 poems
by Mirta Yáñez
Frogpondia
3 poems
by Caridad Atencio
translated by Carmen Laura Contreras, Anne James, and Yma Johnson
Caridad Atencio (Havana, 1963) is a poet, essayist and investigator. She holds a degree in Philology from the University of Havana. She has worked as an auxiliary investigator for the Martian Studies Centre for 28 years. She’s the author of the following collections: Los viles aislamientos (Letras Cubanas, 1996) Los poemas desnudos (Ediciones Mucuglifo, 1995) Venezuela (Reina del mar editores, 1997) Cienfuegos y Letras Cubanas (2014), Umbrías (Letras Cubanas Caridad Atencio, 1999), Los cursos imantados (Ediciones Unión, 2000), Salinas para el potro (Ediciones Extramuros, 2001), La Sucesión (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2004), Notas a unas notas para L.A. (Editorial Unión, 2005), El libro de los sentidos (Letras Cubanas, 2010). In essay: Recepción de Versos sencillos: poesía del metatexto (Editorial Abril, 2000), Génesis de la poesía de José Martí (Editorial Estatal a Distancia y Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2005), Circulaciones al libro póstumo (Editorial Oriente, 2005), De algunos poetas románticos mexicanos en Martí (Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, 2005), Un espacio de pugna estética (Ediciones Matanzas, 2006), La saga crítica de Ismaelillo (Editorial José Martí, 2008), Del agua refluyente: sobre los versos de La Edad de Oro (Ediciones Matanzas, 2011), Los cuadernos de apuntes de José Martí o la legitimación de la escritura (Ediciones Unión, 2012) and José Martí: de cómo la poesía encarna en la historia (Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2014), José Martí y Lezama Lima: la poesía como vaso comunicante (Ediciones Unicornio, 2015), De la escritura rota y restos de la memoria: apuntesen hojas sueltas de José Martí (Editorial Oriente). She holds a Distinction for National Culture from the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Cuba. She has won the Pinos Nuevos 1996 Poetry Prize, the Dador Award 2000 for essay, the Calendario Award 1999 for essay, the Razon de ser Prize 2002, the Cuban Book Institute’s Dador Award for Poetry in 2002, Gaceta de Cuba prize in 2005, 2010’s Literary Critic Award, 2013’s Dador Poetry Prize, the distinction Gitana Tropical in 2014 and in 2016, the Raul Gomez Garcia Medallion. She is a member of the Science Council of the Martian Studies Center.

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.

Peepholes

La Traversée Difficile

Untitled Verses

Peepholes

Over the brief crossing of two silhouettes the calmness of the one who shall die first. Depths in the fruit’s skin. A tacit movement at the shadow. Courage as a punishment, obligation turned into desire. I’m not afraid of hollowness. It’s a pile of air The fire you watched… Only the weight of time creates a deaf heartbeat in my brain.

La Traversée Difficile

1 Ways to view the disaster by the oblique glance, defused. The inertia of the terrified mannequin is in the air. 2 Almost on the surface the hand was tensed when it squeezed the fruit. Since Isidore every table announces dissection. 3 The inertia of the terrified mannequin is in the air It’s the sale. It’s the sacred death of the cycles. 4 The scaffolds that carry the glance go to the supporting point without protruding. The grisly game of poses, the stairwell, the misfortune above The spirit floats balustered.

I had been tight up on a litter. For me, blind was the motive. The rush never granted to me. I was ruled by a blade. Sothey bruised a dead body. I inflated my features with water, leaving them clean. Without wanting to, I had to see you. The two-tailed snake has only one head.

In the interpretive cell I attempt to describe the mold of my own brain . With my fears still everything passes by. The light clings. In the flow I feel. They would fetch the salt for me without me seeing them. Offspring of the night, I love the face of a rotten corpse.

From where do the relationships continue. If you act as always, it will incriminate you. If you pretend, know about your mistake. You were getting away blameless, marking your skin off to see it grow up. I look at my sacrifice in the frozen imagination. Its punishment thrusts it against me. The prophecy can be seen. Linger in the dark and my shadow haunts my shadow. I wouldn’t cut something down if it weren’t strictly mine.

Like you “I obtained the lover by absolute mistake.” The room is the space of my brain’s country. Onto the inside the glassy appearance freezes. Onto the inside the sinuous structure is a knife. I’m at a landscape identical to mine and I want to go back. The forgotten effort torments in your mind. This way, trapped in a void of involuntary flesh, made from the dark substance of my veins, I throw an enormous net. I open myself in the fire.

Run away from the too perfect windows, destinies, the chain, even though it looks too long. Run away from yourself. Naturally your face fits in deformed angles. Time has its own rhythm. Unmask social obstinacy the biological nature of life. Burned in the shape of a butterfly. “May the thoughts spontaneously come true.”

Give this time what that time takes. It burned for the stretch of hunger until this ringing of the indifferent fact. “Don’t you ask immensity.” What they hid away to be shown, clinging to the infinite goodbye. “A permanently sharp blade loses its edge.” Alone and unmasked I tore off your torn weapons.

Read blood on it: your swollen face with disdain. The instant when a girl dries up. To tear a piece of eyelid up to see. It stings this that I leave behind. The obstacle will let you move forward. Can you not see me without my eye? Outside the world is too cruel for you who were born in captivity.

Caridad Atencio (Havana, 1963) is a poet, essayist and investigator. She holds a degree in Philology from the University of Havana. She has worked as an auxiliary investigator for the Martian Studies Centre for 28 years. She’s the author of the following collections: Los viles aislamientos (Letras Cubanas, 1996) Los poemas desnudos (Ediciones Mucuglifo, 1995) Venezuela (Reina del mar editores, 1997) Cienfuegos y Letras Cubanas (2014), Umbrías (Letras Cubanas Caridad Atencio, 1999), Los cursos imantados (Ediciones Unión, 2000), Salinas para el potro (Ediciones Extramuros, 2001), La Sucesión (Editorial Letras Cubanas, 2004), Notas a unas notas para L.A. (Editorial Unión, 2005), El libro de los sentidos (Letras Cubanas, 2010). In essay: Recepción de Versos sencillos: poesía del metatexto (Editorial Abril, 2000), Génesis de la poesía de José Martí (Editorial Estatal a Distancia y Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2005), Circulaciones al libro póstumo (Editorial Oriente, 2005), De algunos poetas románticos mexicanos en Martí (Instituto Mexiquense de Cultura, 2005), Un espacio de pugna estética (Ediciones Matanzas, 2006), La saga crítica de Ismaelillo (Editorial José Martí, 2008), Del agua refluyente: sobre los versos de La Edad de Oro (Ediciones Matanzas, 2011), Los cuadernos de apuntes de José Martí o la legitimación de la escritura (Ediciones Unión, 2012) and José Martí: de cómo la poesía encarna en la historia (Centro de Estudios Martianos, 2014), José Martí y Lezama Lima: la poesía como vaso comunicante (Ediciones Unicornio, 2015), De la escritura rota y restos de la memoria: apuntesen hojas sueltas de José Martí (Editorial Oriente). She holds a Distinction for National Culture from the Ministry of Culture, Republic of Cuba. She has won the Pinos Nuevos 1996 Poetry Prize, the Dador Award 2000 for essay, the Calendario Award 1999 for essay, the Razon de ser Prize 2002, the Cuban Book Institute’s Dador Award for Poetry in 2002, Gaceta de Cuba prize in 2005, 2010’s Literary Critic Award, 2013’s Dador Poetry Prize, the distinction Gitana Tropical in 2014 and in 2016, the Raul Gomez Garcia Medallion. She is a member of the Science Council of the Martian Studies Center.

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.