Featured poet: Diego Alegría

Diego Alegría Corona (Santiago, 1994) studied English Language and Literature at the Universidad de Chile. He won the Premio Municipal Juegos Literarios Gabriela Mistral (Chile) in 2012 and was finalist for the Premio José María Valverde (Spain) in 2014.

The following poems come from his book Raíz abierta (Pez Espiral, 2015).

as i cross
the river

your silhouette

disappears

*

the gate
of the cliff face
was always open

to the sea

*

within
the tree

ash

rises up

*

on my flesh

rests your absent
hand

*

the stones
make themselves bare

rain falls
in the desert

*

every mask

suffocates
in the depths

of oneself

*

i fell

from one face

to another face

in that immensity
was silence

*

the trace
of foam

contains
the sea.

— translated by Jessica Sequeira