Original illustration by Pedro Gomes

The gunpowder went biting its elbows.
— César Vallejo

I have met gunpowder: gunpowder moves past with death: gunpowder is turncoat: gunpowder explodes on the earth: gunpowder carpets the earth with shrapnel and flashes: gunpowder slows to a stop: gunpowder passes on by: gunpowder seeks out: gunpowder takes cover: gunpowder disguises itself as flame: gunpowder is thunder from combat: gunpowder is the smoke coming off death: gunpowder burns blood into ruins and corners: gunpowder breaches: gunpowder passes on by: gunpowder, underhanded: gunpowder and its gusts: gunpowder and its lightning bolts: I have met death.

Epigraph from “Hymn to the Volunteers for the Republic,” translated by Clayton Eshleman.

Kristin Dykstra
Kristin Dykstra is a writer, literary translator, and scholar. Her translation of The Lady of Elche, by Amanda Berenguer, was published by Veliz Books in 2023. Dykstra is the principal translator of The Winter Garden Photograph by Reina María Rodríguez, winner of the 2020 PEN Award for Poetry in Translation and a finalist for the National Translation Award. Her own recent poems appear in Lana Turner, Almost Island, Seedings, Clade Song, and elsewhere. Find her on Instagram @kdykstra202x.

Jesús Cos Causse
Jesús Cos Causse (Cuba, 1945–2007) wrote many prizewinning collections, such as Con el mismo violín (1970), El último trovador (1975), Las islas y las luciérnagas (1981), and Balada de un tambor y otros poemas (1987). An edition of his collected poems in Spanish, Jesús Cos Causse: Poesías Selectas, appeared in 2021 as part of the Serie Malunga, published by the Instituto Internacional de Literatura Iberoamericana at the University of Pittsburgh. Cos Causse was active with a variety of cultural organizations, and at his city’s annual Caribbean Culture Festival, he led a regular poetry workshop dedicated to the Caribbean and the world.