David Joez Villaverde

My Palm as Prospector’s Map to the Abandoned Subway of Rochester

read: the shadows will be behind

you if you walk into the light

and I will pray for the sun to

grant me this: a marled sky,

a shiver of silt weeping silver

onto our outstretched hands

say: memory is an alluvial plain

and we are sifting nostalgia,

or say: memory is stale dust

and we are winnowing away

or whisper: we are the bawling

darkness beneath the city, wild

blooded nocturne caroming

through wrought iron & concrete

I will say: these words are the shiftless

wind or these words sluice through

flume & that is not enough to hold

the open mouthed roar of the

cascading Genesee that is my

panning heart spilling into

another body of water

say: I am not open but I am opening

and I am not love but I am loving

and I am not the river, I am the roar

David Joez Villaverde is a CantoMundo fellow and an MFA candidate at the University of Michigan. He is the winner of Black Warrior Review’s 2018 poetry contest. His work has appeared in Frontier Poetry, RHINO, The Indianapolis Review, and elsewhere. He lives in Detroit and can be found at schadenfreudeanslip.com