Yellow 

Some sort of goddess of some sort 

of season between summer and autumn.

Some bright heat through a dancing curtain 

onto our bed. An especially warm day in October. 

Not a muse—greater. A steady flow 

of song echoing from the wood-floored corridor. A perk,

a peak, a break from uncontrollable alternating

of me and un-me and here and 

un-here. From what river were you born? Was it in the sky? Di...

You realize that all of their stories are gone, and that one day that’ll be you, your brother, sister, and so on, dead with stories.

I’m Offered to Officiate a Plantation Wedding 

Mice and rats don’t crawl over her 

In a crawlspace. She does not drill

 
A hole in it to watch her children; 
Lay on her back or stomach; stop 

Hiding for a moment to exercise out 
Of a binocular, lack of ventilation, 

Room to sleep on her side. She will not 
Live in an attic for seven years, hunch 

And stoop to scoop cotton from the sharp 
That was the...

My Father Took Me Hunting 

because we had given up other ways to make music.
The white hummingbird of buckshot
is not melodic, but neither is silence.
What I recall I recall scarcely. Like a sostenuto
hanging so faint it may not be there at all,
I could convince myself this is just resonance.
To this day I forget the aurora of gunsmoke
gathered over a rabbit. Pink slime
wetting the dry pages of wha...

The Editors of Puerto del Sol would like to thank everyone who submitted their work to the 2020 Poetry and Prose Contest. Our winners were chosen by Rodney Gomez and Vi Khi Nao respectively.

2020 Poetry Contest Winner: "American Sonnet for My Medical History" by Babette Cieskowski

Chosen by Rodney Gomez:

"'American Sonnet for My Medical History' is an unrelenting, high-energy soliloquy. I admire the...