From “Small Sargasso Mountains” [“The words of the poem”]

The words of the poem give shape to what is appearing. Surfacing is possible due to the voice that blows up the words. This does not deny its previous existence in a wind, perhaps, appreciated only by intuition. For me, the shape continues to appear in words of Mexico City Spanish. At night, when my brother and I were kids, our mom used to sit on the edge of one of our beds to read us The Iliad. It was a small book with red binding. My mother’s voice in the night giving shape to distance.