RUBEN QUESADA on

Gerald Stern
Sister
​
Across a space peopled with stars I am
laughing while my sides ache for existence
it turns out is profound though the profound
because of time it turns out is an illusion
and all of this is infinitely improbable
given the space, for which I gratefully lie
in three feet of snow making a shallow grave
I would have called an angel otherwise and
think of my own rapturous escape from
living only as dust and dirt, little sister.

Ruben Quesada is the editor of Latinx Poetics: Essays on the Art of Poetry (University of New Mexico Press, 2022), containing more than two dozen Hispanic and Portuguese poets writing about their cultural and academic practice. Quesada is the author of Revelations, Next Extinct Mammal: Poems and a book of selected translations of Luis Cernuda titled Exiled from the Throne of Night. He was a poetry blogger for the Chicago Review of Books, Ploughshares, and The Kenyon Review before serving as poetry editor for AGNI, PANK, and Pleiades. He now serves on the Board of the National Book Critics Circle.In 2012, he moved to Illinois and began a career as a poet, critic, and professor. Quesada has taught for various programs in writing and publishing, including the UCLA Writers’ Program, Vermont College of Fine Arts, Poetry Foundation, Attic Institute, Tin House, and MFA Program in Creative Writing at Antioch University-Los Angeles. He lives in Chicago, Illinois.Quesada has been honored by the Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events in the City of Chicago with an artist grant and fellowships from Canto Mundo, Lambda Literary, Santa Fe Art Institute, Vermont Studio Center, and Virginia Center for the Creative Arts.