poetry

In the end, I decided to enter the Coffee House. Second floor of Metrocentro. I waited for a lady who was completely unknown. I positioned myself in front of the glass walls of said premises, through which I watched people pass by. Businesses along the corridor waited for their customers, while the crowd moved in different directions. He was adrift, turned into half man and half cell, there was no middle ground.

The process itself, of putting one word together with another to structure a thought in a way that makes it communicable, shouldn't hurt. The art of writing is a pleasure and that is why those of us who write are always involved in this, either writing as such or thinking about what to write or remembering what we already wrote. It is a pleasure and, consequently, it develops a need, a drive, a form of falling in love...

Inspiration is talked over and over again. What if it's a crush, like Cupid's. What if it is a flash, some muses, some magicians, a miracle, a door, an ancestor, a mischievous spirit that suddenly opens the way for us to a beautiful text or gives us a key or a map or a compass towards a subject that lends itself to our literary adventures. In the context of writing our story, that inspiration would tell us where to start or which characters are key or which places to recreate or what treasure is in our memory that serves as the foundation for the narrative...

Eager to polish a story, we proceed to replace common places with other, more creative and personal ways of saying things. Now, it is necessary to think (besides being original) what that "common phrase" or commonplace really affects. Sometimes it is because sincerity is lacking where the matter of being believed is essential, as in a testimony or in an autobiography, because there specificity is the greatest contribution...

In the shared territory of the language, there are not only words, the structures that give them meaning, local expressions, grammatical and orthographic conventions, etc. There is also a drinking fountain, a source of ready-made phrases or expressions that we call commonplaces. They come from interesting or effective findings that some author gave to humanity and humanity, grateful, wanted to show their admiration by repeating that phrase and embellishing or improving their literature with it. That author could be a poet, a novelist, an orator, a philosopher...

Traveling to the sea on a Tuesday is something strange, of course it is not normal. But that happened. We decided to venture to the beaches of Poneloya, to be more precise, to the mouth. The intense heat of Holy Week forced us and we all somehow agreed. And we set sail.

I asked a friend who is a great conversationalist why she didn't write those colorful and interesting stories that she told with such grace and enthusiasm. He replied that without the nourishment of the immediate reaction of his audience, he could not fabricate stories and that he had tried but that the result was frustrating. “My written stories -he lamented- seem rigid and bland to me; they are no longer living words”.

New opportunities: The North Carolina Literary Review is accepting submissions of poetry, short fiction, and creative nonfiction on the theme "Disability (in) NC Literature" for the 2024 issue...

«You can go in peace!», finally said the priest Jesús, saying goodbye to the parishioners. The Nuevo Rosario church returned to its former condition of silence, sandalwood incense and darkness. The priest Jesús had been practicing the priesthood for five years and he spent his last years as a seminarian abroad. Upon finishing his religious studies, he asked his superiors to transfer him to his town, where a priest was needed to pray for the souls of the living and the dead.

They say that many who have shouted eureka! finding something they desperately sought, they achieved it in the humbling, everyday act of taking a shower or soaking in a bathtub. The explanation is that when we let go of the state of despair, the mind is released and finds itself without effort, that is, in freedom.