Blog

Somehow I’ve spent the better part of 26 years being brought to some of the most remarkable and breathtaking places on Earth because of my poems.

✨

I admire Ahlam Bolooki & Isobel Abulhoul so much. Powerful & brilliant women, surrounded by and supporting other powerful & brilliant women, to platform some of the most urgent and timely books, writing, and ideas of the moment. And bringing it to the Middle East. I am awed by your intention, care, and heart in every detail of the Emirates Airline Airline Festival of Literature.

✨

The entire @emirateslitfest team is like family now: heartfelt gratitude to Andy, Mary Ann, Dania, Jenny, Annabelle, Aliya, Aira, Anuradha, & every single staff member and volunteer.

✨

This is my 5th time making it to Dubai since 2018, the 4th time as your guest, and my 3rd time performing at Desert Stanzas. I am honored and humbled beyond words by your belief in my work and trust. And to get to do it with my best friend, Brent Shuttleworth, and my legendary amiga, Dr. Afra Atiq, is a dream.

✨

I do every single gig like it is the last one I will ever do. I want to walk off that stage having saved nothing. That being said, I hope to make it back to your side of the world someday soon.

✨

With all my heart,

✨

Carlos

✨

#EmiratesLitFest

#CarlosOnTour

Other than anything resisting fascism right now, what could I possibly celebrate? That being said, I want to send my heartfelt gratitude to Dr. Raina J. León for selecting my manuscript as the winner of the 2025 Alta California Chapbook Prize. I am so moved by these words in her judge’s citation:

“From the first poem in “Patrilineation,” the stakes are high. The author invites us into an early memory, rooted in a tender and fragile part of the body, through a lens of loss: the eyelashes of a child. In these poems, we confront a truth: we live and breathe and move always vulnerable, always at the edge of or in the process of losing. How do we name our lineages, what we have inherited, and transmute the strength that comes from pain into a strength that, itself, multiples the transformational possibilities of love to others and the self? How do we name the political hypocrisies—all men are created equal—while knowing the threats all around you and holding your child, in all his beauty, in your arms? These poems engage questions, guide us into reflection, and agitate us towards action, change, and love.”

I will have my first bilingual edition of poetry—”Patrilineation”—out in the world this summer.

I could not be more thrilled to have the incredible team at Gunpowder Press, in collaboration with Letras Latinas and the Institute for Latino Studies at Notre Dame, publishing this chapbook. I am so grateful to Emma Trelles, Francisco Aragón, @alexlregalado, @josueandresmoz, and everyone who is helping bring this chapbook into the world.

This is the second excerpt from my—yet-to-be picked up for publication—full-length manuscript, “Where Language Ends,” to win a chapbook prize (the other, “Circling Fatherhood,” won the Poetry International Chapbook Prize and will be published as a folio in the forthcoming edition of Poetry International sometime before AWP).

#AltaCaliforniaChapbookPrize
#BookPrize
#Patrilineation
#CarlosOnTour