In a poem dedicated
to Julio Cortazar,
Roque Dalton wrote: “a lonely
angel on the head of a pin
listening to someone piss.”
In a poem dedicated
to no one, Cortazar wrote:
“it’s raining into my coffee.”
I’m no angel, and need to piss.
It’s raining into my coffee.

Ariel Francisco is the author of Under Capitalism If Your Head Aches They Just Yank Off Your Head (Flowersong Press, 2022), A Sinking Ship is Still a Ship (Burrow Press, 2020) and All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017), and the translator of Haitian-Dominican poet Jacques Viau Renaud’s Poet of One Island (Get Fresh Books, 2023) and Guatemalan poet Hael Lopez’s Routines/Goodbyes (Spuyten Duyvil, 2022). A poet and translator born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents and raised in Miami, his work has been published in The New Yorker, American Poetry Review, Academy of American Poets Poem-a-Day, The New York City Ballet, Latino Book Review, and elsewhere. He is Assistant Professor of Poetry and Hispanic Studies at Louisiana State University.

Martín Ramírez (1895-1960) was born in Jalisco, Mexico. Ramírez immigrated to the United States in 1925, at age 30, leaving behind his wife Ana and their four children. He worked on the railroads and in the mines in California for several years before he was arrested for reasons unclear in 1931. He was later also diagnosed with catatonic schizophrenia and subsequently moved through a series of psychiatric institutions until 1948, when he was sent to DeWitt, where he remained until his death in 1963. While at DeWitt, Ramírez turned to drawing as a primary means of expression. In recent years, Ramírez has been the subject of solo exhibitions at numerous venues throughout North America and Europe, including the Centro cultural/Arte contemporáneo, Mexico City (1989); American Folk Art Museum, New York (2007, 2009); and Museo nacional centro de arte Reína Sofía, Madrid (2010). [Bio courtesy of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum]