ArLiJo 219

Robert L. Giron
2 hours ago
11 min read

This issue features

Poetry by

Valentin Casadei,

Louis T. Girón,

Paula Goldman, and

Christina Yordanova Koleva

Photography by

Serban Enach,

William Howard,

Sandris Veveris, and

Diego Cano Cabanes

Review by Robert L. Giron

Serban Enach

Cave at Mycenae

Valentina Casadei

Six Months

Forgive me for the crying,

the stifled or the thunderous ones,

at work, behind the counter,

or alone, in the heart of the night,

while the drunk father was celebrating with friends.

Forgive me if the implosions

became earthquakes for you.

Did the membranes tremble?

Did you slide inside the placenta?

Your father sprawled by morning, undone by whiskey,

once again the mother waiting,

swallowing rage like a mute angel.

Do you remember the warmth of our hands on you?

Only skin, thin as a wall,

between our palms and your sketched-out nose.

Did you feel that love never spoken,

entirely contained in the gesture?

Did you feel the joy, the excitement?

And everything we could never give you — did you feel that too?

Did you know I was hiding nails?

I pierced myself because your father was richer than the night,

but the night devoured him.

Don’t worry about the kicks you gave me —

they were caresses to me.

It was you kicking in my place

when I no longer could.

You grew inside my silence,

in the nights I lay still, holding you tight, without arms,

thinking of the mother I would never become,

of a body that never quite becomes a home.

Don’t worry about the kicks you gave me —

who would have ever thought a kick could soothe me.

Did you feel the turmoil, the short breath,

the knot in the throat, the closed stomach?

Those weeks without eating — were you hungry?

Those weeks without sleep, as I tossed in bed,

were you able to sleep?

Those weeks without sleep, as I tossed in bed,

did you know it wasn’t because of you?

Forgive me for pain that wasn’t yours,

for your brief destiny.

The bleeding like a goodbye,

and your absence that continues to nourish.

About the Author

Valentina Casadei, an Italian author and screenwriter, has been living in Paris since 2014. She holds a degree in Film History and in Screenwriting. She has written and directed two short films and is currently developing her first feature film. Her poems and short stories have appeared in numerous Italian and French literary magazines, and she has published six poetry collections in Italy and France. She works as a script reader, teaches screenwriting at a film school, and leads poetry workshops, particularly for women who are survivors of violence.

Wiliam Howard

Aerial View of Hurricane Matthew Flooding, Wilson, NC

Louis Girón

Down the River

That night changed everything. Emergency calls did not reach us.

The ocean in the sky had fallen on us. Engorged, overcharged

our rivers. Unknown to us, killed our neighbors downstream.

Next morning, we woke to dark. No news, no electricity. For us,

last in line along the wires, after any long rain, life as usual.

Some of us walked down to the banks, low grey clouds above,

for a break from the tedium that follows any storm here

to see what we would see go

down the river.

The Swannanoa was high, brown, and swollen. Rapid currents

like living, muscled pythons, as thick as elephants’ legs,

twisted by in loud rushes. Stretches of bank were flattened

or gouged out. Large trees uprooted, splintered, were strewn

like jackstraws in a game abandoned by giant children. Nothing usual.

Ten feet above us, in the cleft of a slender tree, a ripped

plywood plank, spotted with black mold. Next to it, a red T-shirt.

Our meeting house, picnic tables, mailboxes, rows of bamboo,

truck-sized slabs of pavement, sections of our only road in or out,

— and our summer were gone, gone, gone

down the river.

Ahead for most of us, to make do, mostly to know water, to find water,

to haul water, to pour water; consuming the entire light of days.

Then, in the sudden early nights, we stumbled about, faint smudges

within solid shadows, lost in our hearths and lawns now menacing.

New wealth: electricity, potable water, sound limbs, camper’s lore.

Now, our frail and old pushed to the edge. Our bounty: the nearby

spring of clear water, the sharing of thawed food. Our solace:

relearning neighbors in the caring of neighbor for neighbor.

Even as the neighborhood as usual had gone

down the river.

High voices of children proclaimed holiday in a damp changed world.

They built tiny houses for fairies, roofs from layers of moss,

pillars from broken twigs. Meanwhile, more trees, a barn or two,

bodies of animals, and more debris swept past. One neighbor

saw a house carried by the currents, a man clinging to the house.

The man exchanged waves with him. The real turned surreal,

or perhaps the surreal turned real, as the man shrugged

like a gambler who had just lost a fortune on an upturned card,

trying for the feeling of — but far from the calm of, the usual,

before the house hit the bridge, before the man was gone

down the river.

The poem first appeared in the publication Kakalak in 2025.

About the Author

Louis Girón is a recovering neurologist/clinical pharmacologist. He grew up in San Antonio, was a battalion surgeon in Viet Nam, somehow endured several winters in the uninhabitable Midwest before coming to Asheville, North Carolina, where neighborhood bears and rejection notices, instead of rattlesnakes, greet him at the mailbox. After a completed poem dropped without warning into a budget for a research proposal, null hypotheses morphed into villanelles, dose-response curves into sonnets, and action potentials into palindromes. At first fearful that this twist of mind indicated mental infirmity, he continues to write poems, some even escaping editors’ hatchets. He is having a blast.

Sandris Veveris

An Elderly Couple Was Walking Along Seashore on a February Day. Baltic Sea, Veczemju Cliff

Paula Goldman

Late Flowering

Three days past Valentine’s Day, roses open

reluctantly, light pink, darker pink, hardly colorful.

There’s no bacchanalia here, the beginnings of

Valentine’s Day, Lupercalia 6^th C BCE, when

women’s hands were whipped at random

with bloodied strips of goat hide for fertility.

Way past fertility, we live on the darker side

of life’s advances, illness and death. Not yet, I say,

“Do not go gentle into that good night...” Chocolates, jewelry,

flowers, cards, celebrate a pagan holiday, or rather Hallmark.

Ours, husband, an everyday love, fills our steadily beating

hearts with cherubs enough. Preparing coffee, watching news,

opening the front door, picking up the paper, breakfasting

on oatmeal, yogurt and granola, seeing the sunlight hovering

over Lake Michigan, we sit beside each other lovingly,

as each day quickly passes, gracing our long lives.

“Be grateful,” people say. I want more. I want what I didn’t have

before, coming to you like a rose finally opening. So afraid

of loss, a sock, a purse, a T-shirt, a set of keys, I held my heart back,

back, my mind stood firm, and now a bouquet opens, like the one

from our wedding day, a lifetime ago on the Atlantic City boardwalk,

when family was alive. The next passage we undergo, a loss so great

my heart will break. Why did this flowering come so late? I needed more

light like the roses to see the way to your kindness and care.

And we have come this far, a growing love, to our last hour

when the flowers open and the flooding light become our prayers.

About the Author

Paula Goldman, born in Atlantic City, now resides in Milwaukee, WI with her husband, Allan. She has taught at the University of Maryland at College Park, Md. and worked as a reporter for The Milwaukee Journal. She volunteered for 25 years at the Milwaukee Art Museum as a docent and lecturer of Greek mythology. She published two books of poetry: The Great Canopy, won the Gival Press Poetry Award, and Late Love (Kelsay Press). Her chapbook Late Flowering was recently awarded a prize from Finishing Line Press. Her poems have appeared in many magazines and several anthologies. She has won first-place prizes in several magazine competitions. She has two grown children and three grandchildren. She earned an MA in Journalism from Marquette University and an MFA from Vermont College.

Christina Koleva

Dream

Why don't you sleep, don't you feel like dreaming,

You are reading heavenly prisons,

In a dream, I am waiting for you

and I am still excited,

When you meet me in the other world.

I look at you with sincere feeling,

This one burns like a priest in a temple before God,

In our dream I love you and I am not empty,

In another world, the world for me is only you.

About the Author

Christina Yordanova, born in the town of Pazardzhik, Bulgaria, studied journalism at the University of National. She also studied world economy, political management at the Sofia University and public administration at the Academy of the Ministry of Interior and worked as a sports editor on the websites of the Focus agency and the Trud newspaper. In 2016, she published her first book of non-fiction, To Spain with Love - Ethnic Tolerance and National Self-Confidence on the Pages of the Spanish Sports Press. In 2021, her second book Our Lives was published with 17 stories and essays that participated in and won competitions, and in October 2024, her the third book Signs with 15 sea stories. She was a participant in the master classes with writers Zdravka Evtimova and Georgi Gospodinov during the Apollonia Culture and Art Festival, Sozopol, 2022 and 2023, as well as in numerous literary competitions for poetry, journalism and prose.

Diego Cano Cabanes

Poster of the Generalitat Velencia for the Protection of a Centenary Walnut Tree on Oct. 13, 2025, Bocairent, Spain

Reivew by Robert L. Giron of Talar un Nogal / To Fell a Walnut Tree

Review of Talar un Nogal / To Fell a Walnut Tree (Broken Bowls Editions)

by Marta López-Luaces, translation by Tanya Huntington

The poetic collection Talar un Nogal / To Fell a Walnut Tree delves into the core of humanity and whence it came.

Evoking the mystery of Genesis where man named the animals and all the planets, López-Luaces leads the reader through poetic analogies and stories as examples of what man has done or not done, whereby nature reacts to being abused:

From the tree, we stole nobility

From the eagle, we stole the sky

From the owl, we stole the darkness

From humanity, we stole …

yet in her poetic mind

There is no time here

there is no history

only the presence

of water

water which normally cleanses but here

there is pain / there are tears

while wanting a cleansing we find

corporeal superiority

a license to kill

and throughout the collection we hear

… the chorus of the landscape:

blackbirds nightingales

thrushes

in birdsong

because there is pain / there are tears

whereby humanity longs for nature to be in harmony but instead there is destruction.

Yet in the dismal surroundings nature and animals try desperately to set the Earth on its axis,

wanting stability.

… in the universe

where gods are dead

and humanity has imposed itself

on the heavens

for in this strained, godless place

… we felled slayed

Murdered

And yet nature and the vast array of life continue to grow, blossom, pouring out the vitality of the

sanctity of life, more powerful than the flow of destruction.

But the die has been cast

There will no longer be prophecies or spells

as a balm

to soothe our mortality

. . .

for

at the very center of silence

what is demanded is

sacrifice

And among the dire setting we lament

Where are

the righteous?

López-Luaces takes us through a historical and mythical journey To fell a walnut / To slay an animal / To murder a woman all the while giving the reader examples to point us in the right direction, invoking Ceres, who symbolizes fertility and the bounty of harvest so that we can

… reclaim the passion of loving

of goodness

of being

and hope

so that good mother nature will remain with us

In this cerebral poetic collection, López-Luaces takes the reader through a challenging philosophical journey in the hopes that through divine intervention, we the current living can wake up from the political morass that his draining all humanity and morality so that the infectious ideology that is consuming earthlings is stopped before we reach complete destruction.

Here in quotidian language yet in complex analogies, López-Luaces is sounding the horn before Armageddon, and we would be wise to wake up.

About the Author

Marta López‑Luaces is a poet, translator, and professor whose work bridges cultures and languages. Born in Spain and based in New York City, she writes poetry that explores memory, migration, and the imagination. She is the author of several books of poetry and fiction, and her work has appeared in numerous international journals and anthologies. Her writing often engages questions of identity, belonging, and the fluid relationship between languages. López‑Luaces has participated in literary festivals, readings, and translation projects across the United States, Latin America, and Europe. She has been recognized with awards and grants for both her fiction and her contributions to bilingual literature. In addition to her creative work, she is a long‑time professor dedicated to teaching literature, writing, and translation. Her current projects continue to deepen her commitment to intercultural dialogue through poetry. She believes in poetry as a bridge between communities and a space for shared imagination.

About the Translator

Tanya Huntington (USA, 1969). Bi-national writer and artist. Managing Editor of the digital magazine Literal: Latin American voices. Her most recent books are Vidas sin fronteras (Alfaguara Infantil, 2019) as an illustrator and Solastalgia (Almadía / Universidad Autónoma de Aguascalientes, 2018) as a poet. She holds a Ph.D. in Latin American literature from the University of Maryland at College Park and currently teaches at CENTRO in Mexico City. She has also co-produced and contributed to public radio and television programs dedicated to culture and the arts, such as PuntoDoc for tvUNAM El Letrero and ReVerso for Canal 22 or Lo Sonado for Radio Horizonte. She received first prize at the Bienal Internacional de Radio de México on two separate occasions. Her artwork has been exhibited both in the United States and Mexico and selected by prestigious venues such as the FEMSA Biennial. Member of the National System of Creative Artists of the National Fund for Culture and the Arts (FONCA) during the 2018-2021 cycle. Her articles, poems, photographs and art have been published in Comment Is Free for The Guardian, the Laberinto section of the newspaper Milenio, the Cultura section of La Razón, and the magazines The Antonym, Casa del Tiempo, Cold Mountain Review, Dead Skunk Mag, Desbandada, df, Diario de Cuba, Este País, La Gaceta del FCE, Hoja por hoja, Inundación Castálida, Letras Libres, Literal: Voces latinoamericanas, Metrópolis, Moist Poetry Journal, National Geographic Traveler, Nexos, Otros diálogos, Periódico de Poesía, Sin Embargo, Transtierros, and ZiN Daily Magazine, among others.

About the Reviewer

Robert L. Giron, founder of Gival Press, the Editor-in-Chief of ArLiJo, and an associate editor for Potomac Review, recently released Songs for the Spirit / Canciones para el Espíritu. His work has appeared in national and international journals and is the author / editor of several books/anthologies of poetry and nonfiction.