Awarded first place in the CNCA’s Roberto Bolaño Prize for Young Literary Creation in the Poetry category, twenty-seven-year-old Francisco Ide Wolleter stands out from the latest generation of Chilean litterateurs. His “Poems for Michael Jordan” are miracles of observation, imbuing quotidian life with existential drama. You won’t ever watch basketball the same way again after this.
I
the ball’s porous plane
makes me think of human skin
a tactile nostalgia
though contact is always illusory
the facts are thus: we’re structured on emptiness
built of atoms,
atoms whose nature is to repel
and be repelled.
that’s why we don’t mix with things
that’s why when we touch
we haven’t really touched anything at all