Cenzontle

"The title of Marcelo Hernandez Castillo’s collection comes from the Nahuatl centzontleh, or mockingbird, meaning possessor of 400 words. Like the bird he references, Castillo has (at least) 400 words and a gift for lyric fragment; his verses stretch a vibratory skin over the life’s ordinary, challenging or painful surfaces. These are poems of borders and border crossing, but they also are poems that confound easy boundaries – between the inner and outer, the real and the felt, between violence and peace. In “Immigration Interview with Don Francisco,” Castillo writes: “(please say more)// Perhaps the butterflies are mute because /noone would believe their terrible stories.” These poem shapes linger in the mind long after the book is shut."