Author: Robert René Galván

Robert René Galván, born in San Antonio, resides in New York City where he works as a professional musician and poet. His collections of poems are Meteors, published by Lux Nova Press, Undesirable: Race and Remembrance, Somos en Escrito Foundation Press, Standing Stones, Finishing Line Press, and The Shadow of Time, Adelaide Books. His poetry has been featured in such publications as The Acentos Review, Adelaide Literary Magazine, Azahares Literary Magazine, Gyroscope, Hawaii Review, Hispanic Culture Review, Latino Book Review, Newtown Review, Panoply, Prachya Review, Sequestrum, Shoreline of Infinity, Somos en Escrito, Stillwater Review, West Texas Literary Review, and UU World. He is a Shortlist Winner Nominee in the 2018 Adelaide Literary Award for Best Poem. Recently, his poems are featured in Puro ChicanX Writers of the 21st Century (2nd Edition) and in Yellow Medicine Review: A Journal of Indigenous Literature, Art and Thought. His poems have been nominated for Best of the Web and the Pushcart Prize. His poem, Awakening, was featured in the author’s voice on NPR as part of National Poetry Month in the Spring of 2021.

Law

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys & desires.

—William Blake

 

At first, laid down on clay tablets

like the footprints of a slender bird,

then, progressed through dried skins and pulp,

burgeoning past parchment

to a flood of writs so numerous

as to be incomprehensible—

mulled by the nine

in their archaic robes,

most prefer dead stone

to a living vine.