Nearly 20 years ago, a poet visited my high school & altered the trajectory of my life—at a crossroads, where I was both beholden to & suffocating in the wreckage of machismo, he offered me an invitation toward the tenderness & vulnerability I needed like air.
That day, he wrote “Poeta del Futuro” in my copy of his book, without knowing that I’d been secretly writing poems of my own for months.
Tomorrow night, in the city I first met that poet, I will launch my first poetry book, with an Introduction from that poet: Martín Espada.
