Cyclical
BIOS
Melissa Sauma is a poet and an economist by profession with an MBA in Business Management as well as a degree in creative writing from Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Her book, Luminiscencia, won the 8th Premio Nacional Escritores Noveles from the Cámara Departamental del Libro de Santa Cruz, Bolivia.
Ariel Francisco is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Florida Review, Guernica, The New Yorker and elsewhere. The Miami New Times named him one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019.
I’ve been myself so many times
today I want to be another
undress myself of myself,
divest
from all the descriptions
conjured by my name,
empty out all the names
that have fallen to me,
that others call me
and that I call myself.
I want to forget
the words I’ve written
the cities I’ve loved
the faces of the departed.
Slowly back away from that house
and walk and walk and walk
until I can’t remember
the street, the address, the backyard trees.
It’s just that I’ve been myself so many times
today I want to be another
or as many others as possible.
So many times
to finally
be the same.