Down to My Elbows (ending on a line by Shakespeare)
hands in a sink
down to my elbows
clogged with gray water
wet rice soggy cornflakes
in the other room
you read Twitter & text
me your favorite jokes
so this is love
i ask the fistful of nasty gunk
in my hand like
it’s a Shakespearean skull
& the skull says
there is nothing either good or bad
but loving makes it so
Excerpted from PROMISES OF GOLD by José Olivarez. Published by Henry Holt and Company. Copyright © 2023 by José Olivarez. Translation Copyright © 2023 by David Ruano González. All rights reserved.
José Olivarez
José Olivarez is a poet, educator, and performer from Chicago. He is the author of Promises of Gold (Henry Holt and Company, 2023), which was long-listed for the 2023 National Book Award in Poetry; Citizen Illegal (Haymarket Books, 2018), winner of the 2018 Chicago Review of Books Poetry Prize, and coeditor with Felicia Rose Chavez and Willie Perdomo of BreakBeat Poets Vol 4: LatiNEXT (Haymarket Books, 2020).