Awake – Laura Cesarco Eglin

I’ve been warned to sleep though my eyelids
dismiss the emergency in the sky while I go
over the rain and separate the water
from the raindrops. The voice on the other end
of far away reminds me that I’ve learned
my abc well: moss for moisture, tree for translations
so I flow from tea to cup to mouth to sleep
on this day when eyelashes become
rays and the eyes decide to be moon and Mars

Uruguayan poet and translator (from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician) Laura Cesarco Eglin’s latest poetry collection is Life, One Not Attached to Conditionals (Thirty West Publishing House, 2020). She’s the translator of Hilda Hilst’s Of Death. Minimal Odes (co.im.press), which won the 2019 BTBA. She’s the publisher of Veliz Books.