Before all the Befores
you, River, had already been called
a thousand and one names
each name for every animal creature
and vegetable spirit
that ever breathed, mated, and died
that ever flowered or shed a spore
each tree, each flower, each bulb
fish, mammal, insect, bird
each calling you a name of her own
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From One River, A Thousand Voices by Claudia Castro Luna. Used with the permission of Chin Music Press. Copyright © 2020 by Claudia Castro Luna.
Claudia Castro Luna
Claudia Castro Luna is Washington’s State Poet Laureate (2018 – 2021) and served as Seattle’s inaugural Civic Poet (2015-2017). She is the recipient of an Academy of American Poets, Poets Laureate Fellowship and the author of One River, A Thousand Voices, Killing Marías and the chapbook This City. She is currently working on a memoir, Only the Stars Remain, about growing up against the backdrop of war in El Salvador and embracing writing to find her way out of a labyrinth of forgetting. Learn more at castroluna.com
