“David Joez Villaverde’s “La Piedra de los Doce Ángulos” explores the self as record, confession, revelation, and gospel, and refuses the ellipsis and compression expected of contemporary Western poetry by insisting on density and presence, entering a trancelike reimagining of self within the silences of history. Arranged in formally experimental essayistic fragments, chilling scenes are counted off first in Roman numerals, then Spanish, then Quechua, and as the counting method deteriorates and decolonizes, the language sparks the neural synapse to connect the detritus of the present to the only surviving shards of the past, clarifying its story in all its mystery and heartbreak. The language builds as it excavates, demolishing false constructs to find a foundation embedded deep in body and earth memory, summoned through time. This inventive, fearlessly non-linear, messy, vulnerable, expansive, ambitious piece is an astonishing disruption, blazing a new path for what’s to come.”

–2018 Poetry judge Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

From 45.2

David Joez Villaverde has recently appeared in Yemassee, RHINO, The Indianapolis Review, and Gravel. He was a finalist for the Antioch-Frontier Fellowship and received a scholarship to attend the Bear River Writers’ Conference. Follow him on Twitter @AcademicJuggalo or his website schadenfreudeanslip.com