Melissa Sauma, translated by Ariel Francisco

MELISSA SAUMA is a Bolivian poet and an economist by profession with an MBA in Business Management as well as a degree in creative writing from Universidad Privada de Santa Cruz de la Sierra. Her book, Luminiscencia, won the 8th Premio Nacional Escritores Noveles from the Cámara Departamental del Libro de Santa Cruz, Bolivia. | ARIEL FRANCISCO is the author of A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Academy of American Poets, The American Poetry Review, The Brooklyn Rail, The Florida Review, Guernica, The New Yorker and elsewhere. The Miami New Times named him one of the Five Florida Writers to Watch in 2019.

Poetry

Instructions for Immersion

The process is simple. You should bury yourself in the night like someone entering the jungle naked, like a child trying to walk the last solidity of water, the lakes…