Oliver de la Paz
Oliver de la Paz is the author and editor of seven books. His latest collection of poetry, The Diaspora Sonnets, will be published by Liveright Press (2023). He is a founding member of Kundiman, and he teaches at the College of the Holy Cross and in the Low-Residency MFA Program at Pacific Lutheran University.
Reading List
Diaspora Sonnet 33
If only by some miracle these thoughts would end having worried my brain as one who nestles into mounds of hay. The bale wears its field-smell—its ephemeral mind, the idea of safety. Worry, the mouth of a sleeping breather. The instinct to love is to worry. And night upon night mounds of […]
Diaspora Sonnet 32
In these moments Nothing passing between hearts, everything turning to mist. Then blank. In his mind, sleeping wars and the sleeping soldiers with rifles against their knees. Guns and the shoulder straps, seductively slung across the breastbones of the uniformed. In their boredom, I imagine them stand and cross one leg over […]
Diaspora Sonnet 31
Green and green in flooded terraces. Rows mirrored in the flooding irrigation— the reflection, a kind of brimmed silence. A potential. Across the swath of light, the bright fields, in the wind, ribbon images. The intimacy of a beloved kissed into oblivion. The new lights rise along the rows, tender in their […]
Diaspora Sonnet 28
I see my father kneel in tenements and public spaces—places where he declares our generous hungers. There, the lilies dry in the sun, breathless. Desiccating mouths tilting downward toward the red-marrow floor. My father’s knees are bruised as he sweeps up brick dust, ground by many shoes. How the swirls of wind-gusts […]