The heartbeat of the poems of Luciana Jazmín Coronado (tr. Allison A. deFreese) comes from the push-pull of beginning- and end-times. “The Beginnning” is a genesis myth refigured for our critical moment. The Christian version has it that the world sprang from God’s command; Coronado imagines a gentler awakening, in which drowsy, new-born man stumbles not only upon apples but coal—twin sins, the seeds of Anthropocene destruction. “Imperfect Children” is suffused with the same ambivalence, a gentle petition to a lowercase god to heal the open wound of existence; “Creation” imagines in the same breath god’s “perfect green lawn” whose plants gird themselves for its coming destruction.

The Beginnning

I.
I was born.

I’ll follow some path,
ask why I bear such sorrow

I ask the sun to step aside because he’s old
and watches everything without remembering.

I love myself with one hand
and explore northward with the other.
I might be inside a flower
or anywhere else. READ MORE…