Jacob Shores-Argüello is a Costa Rican American writer. His second book of poetry, Paraíso, won the inaugural CantoMundo poetry prize and will appear in 2017.
By Jacob Shores-Argüello
My cousin WhatsApps me from Costa Rica, fits the family
into the rectangle of video as they wave from the balcony.
He turns the phone, shows me a swirl of birds in the hurting sky.
But they are not birds. They are neighbor...
By Jacob Shores-Argüello
The bus arrives in the orchid heat,
in the place where coffee grows
like rubies in the valley’s black soil.
We disembark, walk in twos so we
don’t slip on the genesis mud.
The woman next to me carries
three cellphones as gifts for cousins
and a...
