Olivia Calderón: Three Poems

Caballero

maybe I’ll go west
cut myself on some new spurs,
libation for whoever watches
the deserts,
           let foreign dust create a film
over my eyes,         maybe
this time with a happy ending.

I think loneliness is more useful
to los rancheros, los caballeros,
than it is for us poets —
           out there, you don’t need to talk,
and the longhorns don’t need to listen.
The winds say enough between
the rocks, between each grain of sand,

maybe I wasn’t built for all this,
but instead meant to turn to a leather
in the sun,       work until there’s a rut
between me and Montana, until
I have no name to speak of, until
there’s nothing left but a hot
                                            outline of me.

*Caballero translates to ‘cowboy’ in English. Rancheros translates to ‘ranchers’ in English.

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In Rebuttal of Botticelli

Venus wears all black.

Platforms patent
leather
pretty pink lips
wasn’t born of the sea
but of the earth
not foam —
long grass,

         see: Kansas
         see: cardigan

brunette, not blonde.

Carrying chthonic cheeks,
She keeps dark moons
under her eyes, under
her nails for safe keeping.

Time actually begins
on the way to the night shift,
in a battered chevy
streaking rust on the highway—
not a damn cherub in sight.

Her first memory is itchy;
her second is loneliness.

           See: desire
           See: dusk

In Rebuttal of Botticelli (II)

Anchises is not a soldier.

Wearing a nicotine nimbus
lanky leather
chewing chapped
lips princely in her
prairie rule,
a grown gaze
born of the earth.

           see: the Mississippi
           see: she-wolf

blonde, not brunette.

Their callouses crave
the softness of a dawn,
when Venus comes back,
the rusty return
of a love divine.

Looking out on the long
grass, long drag,
clipped time,
how could they
not tell everyone?

Her first memory is bronze;
her last memory is itchiness.
           see: rust
           see: spirits

Olivia Calderón is a queer Cuban American poet based between Edinburgh and Seville. Graduating with her MSc in Creative Writing in 2023, she was shortlisted for the Grierson Verse Prize and has been published in places such as Gutter, Interpret, LIT Magazine, and various local anthologies. In fall 2024, she self-illustrated and published her first zine of poetry, Florida Woman. She is the founder and editor in chief of the publication guava, and is working on her debut pamphlet.