Iliana Rocha’s work has previously appeared in Puerto del Sol and Yalobusha Review. She earned her MFA in poetry from Arizona State University, where she was poetry editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. She taught composition and rhetoric at Arizona State and developmental writing at South Mountain Community College. Rocha is currently a PhD candidate in English and creative writing at Western Michigan University.
There is a machine digging into the earth.
Angels surround
the spot like vultures, curious
...
& the sky breaks into gray carnations
after 120 days of drought, while the quartz sand rolls
over itself imitating a wave.
I leave & the mountains are wrinkled
...
When Polaris falls, my grandmother
will mourn in the center of the earth, her grief
a giant telescope
...