"Untitled" by Jesús Castillo

View this email on a browser Forward to a friend June 29, 2018   Untitled   Jesús Castillo

Dear Empire, I am confused each time I wake inside you.                         You invent addictions.             Are you a high-end graveyard or a child?                         I see your children dragging their brains along.                         Why not a god who loves water and dancing                      instead of mirrors that recite your pretty features only?           You wear a different face to each atrocity.           You are un-unified and tangled.                         Are you just gluttony?                         Are you civilization's slow grenade?              I am confused each time I'm swallowed by your doors.                Copyright © 2018 Jesús Castillo. Used with permission of the author. About This Poem   "I liked the question Fady Joudah posed in his note about 'Things You've Never Seen,' recently featured in Poem-a-Day: 'when is a poem more than the sum of our progressive, imperial selves?' It made me think: can we get rid of socialization's influence in us, or enough of it to allow us to determine the flavor of our own lives? My friend Omar Pérez said the job of the poet today is to have fun and to observe, and to have fun with what he observes, which I thought was great. Another friend, the Serbian philosopher Obrad Savić, once told me the highest task of poetry is myth. I agree. I imagine the task includes destruction as much as creation." —Jesús Castillo   Jesús Castillo was born in Ciudad Valles in the state of San Luis Potosí, Mexico, and moved to California with his family at age eleven. He is the author of Remains (McSweeney's, 2016), and he has an MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa. He lives in Oaxaca, Mexico.   Photo credit: Megan Touhey Poetry by Castillo   Remains (McSweeney's, 2016) "Things You've Never Seen" by Fady Joudah "Is It True All Legends Once Were Rumors" by Carl Phillips "In Our Late Empire, Love" by Malachi Black June Guest Editor: D. A. Powell   Thanks to D. A. Powell, author of Repast: Tea, Lunch, and Cocktails (Graywolf Press, 2014), who curated Poem-a-Day this month. Read more about Powell and our guest editors for the year. Help Support Poem-a-Day   If you value Poem-a-Day, please consider a monthly donation or one-time gift to help make it possible. Poem-a-Day is the only digital series publishing new, previously unpublished work by today's poets each weekday morning. The free series, which also features a curated selection of classic poems on weekends, reaches 450,000+ readers daily. Thank you! Thanks for being a part of the Academy of American Poets community. To learn about other programs, including National Poetry Month, Poem in Your Pocket Day, the annual Poets Forum, and more, visit Poets.org.   You are receiving this e-mail because you elected to subscribe to our mailing list. If you would like to unsubscribe, please click here.   © Academy of American Poets 75 Maiden Lane, Suite 901, New York, NY 10038