“Hope is in the seeds. In all the little places.”
To read the poetry of Ryan Cruz is to sit in the bed of an old ‘35 Chevy with tortillas hidden in the pocket, mouth watering, face turning white; to walk wistfully through fields of strawberry, arresting with sensuous delight; to stand in wonder at the bank of a river with a “handful of little flat stones” in “the brown of his palm” that skip “all the way across”. Cruz plants seeds of Hope that bloom “past the dark light in her palm” and into the wings of crows, where “beams shine on her head” and set our hearts alight.
Ryan Cruz is a teacher, researcher and writer from Denver, Colorado. He is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer and has a master’s in the Anthropology of International Development from Emory University. His work explores themes of identity, kinship, and self-narrative in a time of American decline.