poetry

Ernesto Estrella: A Selection of Poems from his Forthcoming Collection The American Heart

Ernesto Estrella is a New York-based poet and educator. He is the author of Boca de Prosas and Achronos, and is currently finishing his first poetry collection in English, The American Heart. Ernesto has translated the works of Henry David Thoreau and John Muir into Spanish and has written a number of books and articles on Poetic Theory and Performance Studies. He is a former Yale University professor of Contemporary Poetry and has been showcased in seminars at leading institutions such as the Great Books Foundation, New York Historical Society, Bowery Poetry Club, Walden Woods Project, and the Thoreau Society. In 2021, he launched The Voice of Recovery podcast which uses poetry and storytelling as tools for wellness and mental health. https://www.themapofyourtraps.com/podcast

The selected poems below are from Estrella's forthcoming poetry collection, The American Heart.

General

I love American bodies
I love the bodies of Americans

They are looking for a body
They are in pain
They are looking for a body
They are in pain when they forget
that they are looking at you

You can't reach an American
There is no sense

You cannot touch an American
They are faster
They will embrace you
They will hold you with such a wide thought

And you will be there

more than you have ever been
or ever will
and you will never be

because only they have access.

You cannot touch an American
And this is the introduction
to a generalization:

because I miss you so much.

Absence

There is a land
Of love
And there is
A tendency to go
To sleep.

You are too white
Too much light
I cannot dream with you on top of

There is a season
To write
Poems of empty
Wheels.

You are not one of them.

Wrinkle

If you stretch your agenda
or some part of your body
too much...

you get this month's Fortune cookie

eat gray mornings
bite fate
swim
grow ears
against the floor
with Varese
sing louder also
shiver like a bird and
be proud
so proud
of catching
acute bronchitis
while you translated marrow
into her

those January days had no breaking
point

just the cookies:
a fortune

you have never been happier

those were strangely poor rotations
and I have never thought about
happiness
but that was it

now in full light
in health
I see the wrinkle

smile.