Yanaguana volume 1, issue 2 spring/summer 2026 a literary journal from San Antonio, Texas
Carmen Calatayud
photographs by Esteban Gonzalez
“speak a geography of words”
“my body inside this tree of nopales”
“hold each others’ misshapen hearts”
Photographed Naked With Nopales
at the Edge of the World
I unravel watching you watch me.
My feet in dirt,
eyes blurry from your insistence on morning light.
I’m awake enough to know rawness in front of a camera.
I want to escape being seen by you,
photographer who holds the all
of my body inside this tree of nopales—
my scars and lines, and years of grief.
We could have dressed me in bracelets, silk,
a scarf with skulls, but you lean on my resistance
paint my anatomy in each frame, flesh and fold
and skin, inside this yellow blossom cascade.
You turn lust into living at all hours as you take
photo after photo, and I exhale neon fear.
I stand with my palm to a full nopal, admit that I create
stories from shadows, while you build altars from the sun.
When my words trip and fall, your mouth answers with
bright sound, a voice I want to hear for the time that’s left—
who knows how much—even though a tongue can
unintentionally break the heart.
I sway like a weed in your backyard desert, with
arms and legs that scratch for home in the wind.
So unprepared to witness your acceptance, make it my own.
To trust this wandering body that plants itself near you.
Amongst the Flowers
String of Lights
I was afraid of so much touch.
The way you held my fugitive breasts
with soft palms.
How we freestyled to the shore:
A seaside city where birds sang familiar music.
Where we basked in blue flashes across our mattress.
You were fragile when we arrived
after swimming through the heavy night.
In the morning, I look to the sky
to ask where we belong.
You remind me that we are bodies
running into the red sun.
I want to love you with my lonely legs,
wrap you with the velvet salt of my tongue.
When I’m dizzy from life’s stampede
you coax me to exhale every story,
sit to watch pink flames in the distance.
All this time I’ve waited for someone
to finger away fear and
enter with the promise of air.
We deliver skin to each other
and say I recognize this—
how we hold each others’ misshapen hearts
and risk setting sail with a string of lights
around this rough, ecstatic world.
Desert Hearts
Learning to Love in Last Night’s Dream
—After Hadara Bar-Nadav
I sleep while you turn into a flying star
who disobeys the galaxy
and knocks on the blue door of my shell.
You speak a geography of words
from a journal where five moons live.
I tongue my gunpowder into your mouth.
I want to understand devotion instead of protection.
You, a slice of fire
who dreams of flight & foreign lands—
Cairo Ramat Tangier Fes
Lisbon in a river
Kiss of Oaxaca
Go to your distant skies.
Leave me with the work of my dreams &
this broken shell I exit
& learn to repair:
Don’t wait.
Glide across your heart map,
turn light into sparks above the clouds.
I’ll be in the doorway
when you descend.
Crown of Light
Carmen Calatayud is the daughter of immigrants: A Spanish father and Irish mother. She is the author of two poetry collections: This Tangled Body (FlowerSong Press/Letras Latinas, 2024) and In the Company of Spirits (Press 53, 2012), a runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Walt Whitman Award. Her poetry has appeared in POETRY Magazine, Poet Lore, Rogue Agent, Tahoma Literary Journal and elsewhere. She is a Larry Neal Award Winner and a member of the Macondo Writers Workshop.
We feature the photography of Esteban Gonzalez in this issue of Yanaguana.