Born and raised in Valencia, Spain, Alicia Viguer-Espert travelled the world, learned English as an adult and on her first writing attempt, (2017) was the winner of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Book with her chapbook To Hold a Hummingbird. In 2021 Four Feather Press published her chapbook Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea. She writes about relationships to nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published in national and international journals, anthologies, and magazines. She was selected as one of the “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” in the Special Edition” by Spectrum Publications, and “Editor’s Choice” by Panoply in 2022. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.
Born and raised in Valencia, Spain, Alicia Viguer-Espert travelled the world, learned English as an adult and on her first writing attempt, (2017) was the winner of the San Gabriel Valley Poetry Festival Book with her chapbook To Hold a Hummingbird. In 2021 Four Feather Press published her chapbook Out of the Blue Womb of the Sea. She writes about relationships to nature, identity, language, home, and soul. Her work has been published in national and international journals, anthologies, and magazines. She was selected as one of the “Top 39 L.A. Poets of 2017,” one of “Ten Poets to Watch on 2018,” in the Special Edition” by Spectrum Publications, and “Editor’s Choice” by Panoply in 2022. Alicia is a 2019 and 2020 Pushcart nominee.
Between the damaged roof and the walnut tree
slightly to the right, I watched Venus appear
using a celestial method long discovered
by astronomers who registered astral details
as we, scribes, illuminated manuscripts
in the dim light of the scriptorium.
Those days were sacred, when a robin
sitting on the window sill to preen its tail
caught the brothers’ attention and they
lifted their heads from smooth parchment,
interrupted grinding lapis for a minute
to smile at birds’ ease to reach heaven.
Today the empty monastery stands silent,
stone walls crumbled, beehives destroyed,
all bees dying in clusters from pesticides,
its orchard burned years ago, the pigsty
covered with ivy, only a single walnut tree
stands by the wooden door cracked by sun.
Light lands
over the space between pines
and playing children
squatting over a wounded lizard
moving tail cut-off who knows how.
The younger freckled one picks up
a couple of gilt leaves, tears a sliver
of sun between her fingers
stained with red geraniums
and lizard’s blood.
I sit next to the child now crying
with discontent learning about
the 6th Commandment
for the first time.
