Cage by Rigoberto Gonzalez

I was not assigned to critique “Cage,” but I was assigned to critique a piece by any living poet, and this work immediately stood out to me when I encountered it. Unfortunately, its message has only become more relevant with time, and I highly reccomend it to all. It can be accessed via …

neon graveyard

This piece is the first I ever wrote as I was pioneering the Terzaversenelle form. It recounts a memory of the Neon Graveyard/Boneyard in Las Vegas, and explores feelings of cultural detachment and existential insignificance.

the Pen imprisoned

the state’s men came to take the poet’s home
she Trekked a desert page
they took her clothes they took her skin
she Glided through ink seas

they locked her in a prison dark and bare
she Soared through trees of rhyme
they snapped her body killed her every love
she Scaled the bluffs of verse

Poe Endures

I was prompted simply to write and deliver a tribute speech, whereas all previous assignments in this course were required to be delivered extemporaneously. This opened the doors for creative play with form, and I decided that a poetic form would uniquely strengthen a tribute to my subject, the late …

Two Eyes

This piece largely sustained my participation in this event, as it was actually written in three or four chunks as my poem for three or four different days, and I later pieced it together in its current form. There is a paradoxical force in writing like this from which learning is bound to arise: it …