Meet Eduardo Martinez-Leyva
Eduardo Martinez-Leyva’s poems have appeared in The Journal, The Boston Review, Nepantla: A Journal for Queer Poets of Color, Best New Poets 2015, and elsewhere. He received his M.F.A. from Columbia University, where he was a teaching fellow. He is a CantoMundo fellow.
On Being Named the 2018 Latin@ Scholar
“A community is an essential part of a writer’s development. I am grateful to the Frost Place for selecting me as the 2018 Latin@ Scholar. I am excited to learn and develop my writing this summer. It is an honor to work with writers dedicated to creating community and space for underrepresented voices. Mil gracias!“
A Poem by Eduardo Martinez-Leyva
TORMENTA
The summer Angelo’s wrists
were stitched up, we watched fishermen
struggle out of their wooden boats.
He told us, Storms sound equally
menacing in Spanish, but he could live
in that village, that language
of strong tongue, heat and skin.
His rawboned body, a net draped across
the mudblack shore, where men piled
and piled their days’ efforts.
In a less hurt age, he’d sift along
with us through that limp heap,
the delicate scales, so white
they were nearly transparent.
We looked indifferent then, faked
an accent, haggled a little for what
we could smuggle into the next world.