NPM 2015 - April 4 - Jon Pineda

Jon Pineda (born 1971) is a poet, memoirist, and novelist, who earned his BA from James Madison University and an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University and currently teaches in the low-residency MFA program at Queens University of Charlotte and is a member of the creative writing faculty at the University of Mary Washington [wikipedia].

And here's a poem by Jon for today...

Cinque Terre
by Jon Pineda

Between the train's long slide and the sun
ricocheting off the sea, anyone
would have fallen silent in those words,
the language of age in her face, the birds
cawing over the broken earth, gathering near its stones
and chapel doors. In the marina, the sea and its bones
have grown smaller. Though the tide is out,
it is not the tide nor the feathers nor the cat
that jumps into the street, the dust
lifting with each wing and disappearing. The rust-
colored sheets that wrap the sails of ships,
I don't know their name nor the way to say lips
of water in Italian and mean this:  an old woman
stood by the tracks until his hand stopped waving.

from The Translator’s Diary. Copyright © 2008 by Jon Pineda.
via Poetry Foundation.