Melissa Castillo-Garsow

I was reading the Hispanic journal Acentos Review issue February 2011 and had to highlight Mexican-American Melissa Castillo-Garsow's poem "Colima" here. It's a beautiful modern wide set short poem, and it's almost like a Hispanic Imagist work. It's truly beautiful and has modern elements that blend in perfectly. 

Here's an excerpt:


Colima

deepish sleep and a woman we both knew emerging peacefully from the ocean. walls

white washed with toxic paint and coyote caca on the dirt path to clarity. The uphill walk

to the university for the radio the downhill walk for the swirling folds of my aztec prance.

i walked those streets with raspados and paletas and micheladas or in pick-up trucks with

caguamas and now i swim. with the woman with the many heads, iridescent serpents

skulls  [...]

                                                                                                       when i first ate a sope

and filled my churro with cajeta and thought tequila sunrises where the answer to

anything.

x marks where I swam naked in the ocean. x marks the tree house i will never return to,

wrecked by the aftershocks. i want to smell the salt of the gulf ocean but can’t. so i call

you homey and love you the way i love tecate and tequila the way i remember the

earthquake that broke my bed in two. the volcano erupting like banda music in a quiet

residential neighborhood – still less than that serenata.