First Impressions

Poems of Witness 

By MARELYS VALENCIA 

These poems, drawn from Sanctuary of Fasting Daffodils (Bokeh Press, 2023) and translated into English by Peter Nadler, look back to late-1970s and early-1980s Cuba, a moment marked by the consolidation of revolutionary power under Fidel Castro. National identity was forged through permanent vigilance: the specter of a US invasion, the rhetoric of unity, and the distant yet omnipresent war in Angola, where Cuban men were sent to sustain an internationalist myth. Across these poems, language itself is formed—alongside obedience and dread—at the fraught threshold where childhood consciousness collides with history. What is at stake is not memory as testimony, but trauma: the intimate pedagogy of a regime that teaches even its children what must not be said, what must be feared, and what must be loved in public.

EARLY MORNING

you wake up at 3:03 am
backward souls walk on loose legs.
one peeks through the opening of the mosquito net
—unfolded like a tent.
you deny the wandering spirits. you fear those in the dream
that doesn’t wake you up sheltered in a trench.
it’s hot and the bullets are buzzing overhead.
the crossfire exceeds the speed of a deferred soul.
a fertile projectile—hope of the martyr-maker—
reaches the mother.
you don’t notice the impact
—at an angle the eye avoids—she lies bloodless.
blood is colorless in the night
—it lacks solemnity.

THE WOODEN DESKS

the chalk board is green, cemented. the chalk runs happily
like children at recess, stuffing their mouths with yesterday’s bread,
swallowing wind-stirred dust.
what is social property? —asks the teacher.
“Armageddon” —you whisper.
a photograph of the leader stares at you, and you avert your eyes.
you tighten your lips so that your grandfather’s religious melody
doesn’t escape
(an echo in your head, you-know-you-can’t-sing-it-in-front-of-others).
at any given moment your eyes can meet
those of the leader.
you pray the teacher doesn’t see you crying.

May 11, 2026

Marelys Valencia is an Associate Professor of Latin American Culture and Literature. She recently presented poems from her book, Sanctuary of Fasting Daffodils, along with unpublished works, at Instituto Cervantes in Frankfurt, Germany, and at Aluna Art Foundation in Miami. Sanctuary of Fasting Daffodils is available at the Saint Mary’s College bookstore.