Para Kamaya Marie De Abuela

The vision begins with a river. From this river, you can see a village, marine life, and ancestral rituals. It is here that you recognize origins, and a poison beginning to spread through paradise. Suddenly, a premonition: a wounded animal. The certainty of war cries. What you take with you is what you become, each movement a gamble, a lottery of life that transforms you until this moment, when uncertainty becomes an ally. Lotería: Nocturnal Sweepstakes is a collection of deeply evocative coming-of-age poems that take the reader on a voyage through the intimate experiences of displacement....

No lamento nada. Ni el abandono, ni la humillación, ni el silencio. Sólo queda alejarse. Uno mismo es el que parte. Llueve. Y recuerdo que debo morir. El viento sopla malignamente.

"Los lectores de los cuentos de hadas ya de grandes, se juntan para reyes y Papá Noel. Creen en los duendes de las medias y en el horóscopo. Son del mundo que se visita a la tarde para el lemoncello. y saben preparar lemoncello casero" Así comienzan estos poemas, con esta aclaración. Vengan, sigan a esa liebre.

In 1996 I celebrated a year of sobriety and began a journey of rebirth. That year I developed confidence in myself that previously I never experienced. I took my personal collection of notes, diaries, and tapes from my year in Vietnam and begin to organize them into a book. In 1997 I completed the manuscript and titled it One Heart One Mind: one man's memoir of a tour of Vietnam. The book not only dealt with my year in Vietnam but with the emotional cost of the war on my soul and psyche. With assistance from Jonathan Shay M.D., Ph.D., the author of Achilles in Vietnam (a book about combat...