Punctuation, Accent, Marks

by Laura Cesarco Eglin

 

I have to take my hand to the middle of my chest to punctuate. What I feel in a coffee shop full of light. I am drawn to windows. The horizon is always there—out of reach. Almost outside, almost not here. And then there is you, also in the middle of my chest. Right there where I put my hand. How I accentuate a memory. Almost not real, always far away.

Laura Cesarco Eglin (she/ella/ela) is a poet and translator from Uruguay. She is the author of six collections of poetry, including the chapbooks Between Gone and Leaving—Home (dancing girl press, 2023) and Time/Tempo: The Idea of Breath (PRESS 254, 2022). Her poems and translations (from Spanish, Portuguese, Portuñol, and Galician), have appeared in many journals such as Zócalo: Public SquareAsymptote, Figure 1, Eleven Eleven, Puerto del Sol, Copper Nickel, SRPR, Arsenic Lobster, International Poetry Review, Tupelo Quarterly, Columbia Poetry Review, Timber, and more. Cesarco Eglin is the translator of Claus and the Scorpion by the Galician author Lara Dopazo Ruibal (co•im•press, 2022), longlisted for both the 2023 PEN Award in Poetry in Translation and the 2023 National Translation Award in Poetry. She is also the translator of Of Death. Minimal Odes by the Brazilian author Hilda Hilst (co•im•press), which was the winner of the 2019 Best Translated Book Award. Cesarco Eglin is the publisher of Veliz Books and teaches creative writing at the University of Houston-Downtown. More at lauracesarcoeglin.com.