La espina que florece [The Thorn that Blooms], published by Isla Negra Editores in 2023, is a new collection of poems by Carlos Roberto Gómez Beras. The book will be launched and discussed at the University of Puerto Rico-Humacao (at the Amphitheater of Administrative Sciences) on Tuesday, May 7, 2024, at 10:30am (EST). The presenters will be professors Alinaluz Santiago Torres and Ana A. Marchena Segarra. Puerto Rican writer Ana María Fuster-Lavín explains:

“In this new collection of poems, award-winning Caribbean writer Carlos Roberto Gómez Beras discusses ‘the unfathomable mystery of beauty,’ from his infinite creativity and profound sensitivity and reveals to us the divine Trinity of origin, essence, and the word, which divides into Heaven-Axis-Earth—or rather God/Love/Soul. This book seduces us and invites us to a reflective journey through his poetic gospel, with verses free of metaphorical make-up and stripped of the ordinary. These texts, which ‘speak silences,’ travel like parables from the genesis of his faith—in God, poetry, the universal essence—towards the epicenter of man—another triad: to love, to fall in love, her—to, finally, arrive at its soul, or its essence, which blooms in new triptychs that define life, without offering explanations, because good literature is always a challenge, a flower that emerges from the solitary immensity of the word and its thorns, where the ‘body is a scar from a fall from the sky.’ The enigma of Poetry passes through the poems of one of the most genuine and outstanding voices in Antillean literature.”

VOYEUR

El lenguaje se abre como una puerta.

El lenguaje se cierra como una navaja.

(El signo es el intento de un intento.)

De este lado estoy yo, fingiendo que escribo.

De aquel lado estás tú, fingiendo que lees.

(¿Dónde está Dios en este poema?)

La vida se queda en las palabras.

La muerte se marcha en los silencios.

(Desear es abrazar lo que ya no vuelve.)

La poesía se asoma en el umbral de los desechos.

Dios sólo contempla y calla.

VOYEUR

Language opens like a door.

Language closes like a blade.

(The sign is the attempt of an attempt.)

I am, on this side, pretending to write.

You are, on that side, pretending to read.

(Where is God in this poem?)

Life remains in words.

Death leaves in the silences.

(To desire is to embrace what will no longer return.)

Poetry appears at the threshold of flotsam.

God just watches and remains silent.

Translations above by Ivette Romero. For the original text, and purchasing information, visit https://librerialaberintopr.com/products/la-espina-que-florece-carlos-roberto-gomez-beras