Soledades / Sol Quetzalli / 2024
Sol Quetzalli is a Salvadoran poet and professor of literature who I traded books with in Chiquimula. Her chapbook Soledades captures grief and absence and cages it in iron bars like a haunted loro. You can find her read from the collection during Slam Quetzal here, where she took first place with a voice trembling with emotions. Her work reminds me of Cynthia Guardado at her finest, only in Spanish. The poems here grieve the death of her mother, the rampant murders, and the loss of innocence of a dystopian Salvador drenched in blood. 4 out 5