what are these drawings large and smallthat name things, that summon themreturn them to presence,convert them into other matter?what are the sounds released in airthrough throatsin this utterance that i represent in a drawingred as blood?are these signs mineor do i belong to themor are they and i of different mattera different strain of things that appearbecause they’re spokenexist in a different house, a different hunt, a different cavebut become magicif i see and breathe them?if i ingest them in sound and return themto the air i dwell in?why do i swell with signsin this dimension?why do they carry me from this world to a different onethat’s at once inside and out?,asks the woman, the woman who writesquestions the woman who writeswho jots it down. ¿qué son estos signos? –pregunta la mujer¿qué son estos dibujos mínimos o máximosque nombran cosas, que las llamanlas vuelven presentes,las convierten en otra materia?¿qué son los sonidos que despide el airepor las gargantasesta guturación que represento con un dibujo rojo como la sangre?¿son míos estos signoso soy yo de elloso somos ellos y yo de otra materiaotro relieve de las cosas que aparecenporque están contadasque existen en otra casa, en otra caza, en otra cuevapero que se vuelven magiasi los miro y los respiro?¿si me los como en sonidos y los devuelvoal aire que me habita?¿por qué habito con los signosen esta dimensión?¿porque me llevan del mundo hacia otro mundoque queda a la vez dentro y fuera?–pregunta una mujer la mujer que escribecuestiona la mujer que escribetoma nota.
what are these signs?, asks the woman
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Copyright © 2025 by Mayra Santos-Febres.
English Copyright © 2025 by Seth Michelson
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission
Mayra Santos-Febres is a leading voice in the hispanophone literature of the Black diaspora whose work powerfully explores intersections of race, gender, and sexuality. She has published seven books of poetry, five novels, four collections of short stories, two books of essays, and a children’s book. Her many prizes include the prestigious Letras de Oro, the Premio Juan Rulfo, a Guggenheim Fellowship, a Rockefeller Bellagio Center Residency, and the National Prize in Literature from the National Academy of France. She has taught at Cornell, Harvard, and various Latin American universities, and she is currently a professor of literature at the University of Puerto Rico in Río Piedras.
Seth Michelson has published twenty books of original poetry and poetry in translation, as well as three anthologies of poetry, including Dreaming America: Voices of Undocumented Youth in Maximum-Security Detention. His newest book is Hope on the Border: Immigration, Incarceration, and the Power of Poetry. His honors include fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts, Fulbright Foundation, and Mellon Foundation. His work has been translated into many languages, including Arabic, German, Hindi, Italian, Malayalam, Serian, Slovenian, Spanish, and Vietnamese. He is currently a professor of the poetry of the hemispheric Americas at Washington and Lee University, where he is Head of Latin American and Caribbean Studies and founded and directs the Center for Poetic Research.
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Tripwire, a journal of poetics, is devoted to a counter-institutional exploration of radical and experimental modes of contemporary poetics, art, and cultural politics. The journal was founded in 1998 by Yedda Morrison and current editor David Buuck. Six issues were published between 1998-2002, with a special supplement published in September 2004 for the RNC protests in New York, before rebooting in 2014, with the Tripwire Pamphlet Series begun in 2019. Since 2018, The Poetry Center at SFSU has hosted the annual Tripwire Cross-Cultural Poetics Series.
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