"Acupuntura", by Orlando Boffill Hernandez

I feel like I’ve been pulled from my field

like a weed.

Erik Axel Karlfeldt

 

Honduras grows darks and dawns in Palestine,

nothing gives up my clockwise spindles.

I tried to cure my sleeplessness with cabalas,

but I discovered a bubbling in my blood.

 

Veins are thickets within the body,

seedtime singing in the abdomen

and branching out centuries, underneath at the root.

 

A migrant heart is also an astrolabe

and separates the reds out from DNA and rage.

 

My lineage is insomnia. It resists exile.

No one sleeps if Bethlehem shines in the sun.  

Rolando Kattan

Rolando Kattan is a prize-winning poet, publisher, and cultural activist. He has published ten books of poetry and his work has received prestigious awards in the Spanish-speaking world, including the Claudio Rodríguez Poetry Prize (2024) and the Casa de América Poetry Prize (2021), both in Spain. His poetry has been translated and published in fifteen languages and he has been invited to read throughout the world, in more than fifty countries. He is the editor of two independent poetry presses in Honduras: Mano Nostra and Cisne Negro. He was co-organizer of the Honduran literacy project, Leer es Fiesta, which distributed twelve books at no cost to over 5000 readers. He regularly organizes cultural events in Tegucigalpa. He is a member of both the Royal Spanish Academy and the Honduran Academy of Language.  His collection Bullet-Proof, translated into English by Katherine Hedeen and Víctor Rodríguez Núñez (Eulalia Books, 2026), is forthcoming.

Katherine M. Hedeen

Katherine M. Hedeen is a prize-winning translator of poetry and an essayist. A specialist in Latin American poetry, she has translated over thirty books of some of the most respected voices from the region into English. Her work has been a finalist for both the Best Translated Book Award and the National Translation Award. She is a recipient of the University of Wisconsin’s inaugural Poetry in Translation Prize, two NEA Translation Grants, and a PEN Translates award in the UK. She is an editor of the transnational and translational press, Action Books. She resides in Ohio, where she is Professor of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba. More information: www.katherinemhedeen.com

Victor Rodriguez Nunez

Víctor Rodríguez Núñez (Havana, 1955) is one of Cuba’s most outstanding and celebrated contemporary writers, with over one hundred editions of poetry published throughout the world. He has been the recipient of major awards in the Spanish-speaking region. His selected poems have been translated into over fifteen languages and he has read his poetry in more than fifty countries. He divides his time between Gambier, Ohio, where he is Professor Emeritus of Spanish at Kenyon College, and Havana, Cuba. More info: www.victorrodrigueznunez.com

Orlando Boffill Hernandez

Orlando Boffill Hernandez’s artistic practice centers on two intersecting themes: the exploration of intimacy as a poetic subject and socio-political commentary, particularly concerning Cuba, his native country, though he has lived abroad since 2011. His work reflects on the island as both a confined geography and a metaphorical space, and on emigration through recurring symbols such as the sea, fish, boats, and passports. He also addresses broader issues—power relations, economic struggle, and material existence as an existential condition of contemporary life—often employing irony through the visual language of social media. Drawing on postmodern strategies of appropriation, Boffill Hernandez reinterprets historical and cultural symbols to reinforce conceptual meaning. In his practice, form serves the idea; he rejects a fixed style when the concept demands flexibility. He pursues an art of ideas that seeks intellectual engagement, extending the legacy of Cuba’s 1980s conceptual and socially conscious art.

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