León Salvatierra is a poet from Nicaragua who migrated to the U.S. at the age of 15. He has an MFA in Creative Writing from UC Davis (June 2020) and a Ph.D. in Latin American Literatures with an emphasis on U.S. Latinx literature from UC Berkeley (2014). He has published a book of poetry, Al Notre, with the University of Nicaragua UNAN-León (2012). The collection of poems, written in Spanish, explores the transnational experience of Central American migrants in their journey to the U.S.ACT
Leon Salvatierra
Leon Salvatierra
I’m going to say what love signifies
My grandfather said it was the desire of the I for another I
And since then I began to search for you
My father said the number of love was seven
Because creation lasted seven days
Seven days making love to its seven nights
I looked for you in each seven that ciphered my life
And I found you slipping away to other numbers
One confuses oneself with one’s other self
When two bodies intertwine in bed, three loves
have been in my life, four it will be when you have left
five days that I cannot stand you, six kisses in La Paz Centro
seven years of not finding you, love, show me
from one to a thousand your nights
What is your philosophy of love
you ask me in bed: and I respond
It’s not a flower but maybe it is a number. Here, I gift it to you
Hide it between your legs. At the count of two
Make sure that it does not fall: One
Open Sesame. Two
Loves have stepped into your kingdom.
Translated from the Spanish by Javier O. Huerta