Bridge my mouth to your deathland – let this río de poesía spell your return home. I await you in my dreams and paint the sky with swallows of grief nadie podría escapar since you were swallowed by the earth. Regresa a casa conmigo, bisabuelo – teach me the dimensions of your tomb and mark my letters with your blood. Show this witch starving for your vision that la muerte is but one body away.
Angelina Leaños is a Ventura County Youth Poet Laureate Emeritus and a first-year MFA student at Fresno State University. Outside of school, Angelina serves as a Poetry Out Loud coach and a Poet-Teacher, mentoring youth in poetry recitation and creative writing.
Image credit:Tytti Heikkinen
Tytti Heikkinen is a Finnish author and visual artist with three poetry books in Finland and a translation collection in the USA (The Warmth of the Taxidermied Animal, Action Books 2013). Her writings have been featured in Europe, Northern America, and New Zealand, including Siècle 21 Littérature & Société, Precipice, Flash Frontier, The Columbia Granger’s World of Poetry, Poetry Magazine. In 2023, she was awarded the second prize in the Singapore Poetry Contest and her chapbook, World Undressed, was released as part of the After Hours LTD Chapbook Series by After Hours Edition, USA.
