Cortés' First Letter
I've sunk ships so we can't escape our fate.
Treading through swamp after swamp it's lucky
the leeches haven't finished us off.
A spider bit one of them yesterday,
you should have heard his screams.
Now he can hardly walk from the swelling
and the men take turns sweeping the pus away.
The Tlaxcans mixed some kind of potion
from flower nectar. Don't know if it's mumbo
jumbo, but what other recourse is there?
The vegetation here is monstrous; lilies
so large they might swallow you whole.
I haven't slept for days. Malinche tries to coax me
into bed - as soon as her miasma blankets me I startle
awake, push her off so I can breathe.
I don't know if she's a godsend or a curse. I hear her
chatting with Fernando and can't bear the sound -
a mouth full of mud and scorpions.
Treading through swamp after swamp it's lucky
the leeches haven't finished us off.
A spider bit one of them yesterday,
you should have heard his screams.
Now he can hardly walk from the swelling
and the men take turns sweeping the pus away.
The Tlaxcans mixed some kind of potion
from flower nectar. Don't know if it's mumbo
jumbo, but what other recourse is there?
The vegetation here is monstrous; lilies
so large they might swallow you whole.
I haven't slept for days. Malinche tries to coax me
into bed - as soon as her miasma blankets me I startle
awake, push her off so I can breathe.
I don't know if she's a godsend or a curse. I hear her
chatting with Fernando and can't bear the sound -
a mouth full of mud and scorpions.
What have you been up to since Crab Creek Review? What are you working on?
A year after Crab Creek Review published "Cortés' First Letter," I was accepted into Lancaster University's doctoral program in creative writing, for which I've written my first full length collection of poems. I am in my last year of the PhD and am currently working on my reflective thesis. Some of my poems appear in various journals, including Epoch, Poetry Ireland, The Frogmore Papers, Poetry Daily.
What are you reading?
I have just finished reading Natalie Diaz's wonderful Postcolonial Love Poem and am about to reread Pascale Petit's spectacularly ekphrastic What The Water Gave Me, which is central to my project.
Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
Some advice that I dig and always aim to heed is to make sure readers are given enough context to fully immerse themselves in a poem.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a master's in Hispanic languages and literatures from UC Berkeley and a master's in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in various international journals, including The North, Canadian Woman Studies and Meniscus. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster.
A year after Crab Creek Review published "Cortés' First Letter," I was accepted into Lancaster University's doctoral program in creative writing, for which I've written my first full length collection of poems. I am in my last year of the PhD and am currently working on my reflective thesis. Some of my poems appear in various journals, including Epoch, Poetry Ireland, The Frogmore Papers, Poetry Daily.
What are you reading?
I have just finished reading Natalie Diaz's wonderful Postcolonial Love Poem and am about to reread Pascale Petit's spectacularly ekphrastic What The Water Gave Me, which is central to my project.
Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
Some advice that I dig and always aim to heed is to make sure readers are given enough context to fully immerse themselves in a poem.
Born in Hong Kong and raised in Manila and San Francisco, Christina Lloyd holds a master's in Hispanic languages and literatures from UC Berkeley and a master's in creative writing from Lancaster University. Her work appears in various international journals, including The North, Canadian Woman Studies and Meniscus. She is currently pursuing a PhD in creative writing from Lancaster.