Peoms are not timeless,

but bound to the millstone
of time and cast into the sea.

What will become
of all these songs

once the blind, mute angel
descends and eats

our book, sweet to the tongue
but bitter to the belly?

-Jeremy Paden,
Broken Tulips, © (2013) Accents Publishing

Jeremy Dae Paden was born in Italy and raised in Central America and the Caribbean. He received his Ph.D. in Latin American literature from Emory. His poems have appeared in such places as the Atlanta Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, Cortland Review, Louisville Review, Naugatuck River Review, pluck! and Rattle, among other journals and anthologies. This is his first published collection of poems. He is an associate professor of Spanish and Latin American literature at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky and a member of the Affrilachian Poets.