The Incas used water to cut
the boulders of Sacsayhuaman
and Machu Picchu.

They poured it into crevasses and cracks,
letting it freeze at night and split the stone.

There were days when you could not
stand my weight and days when I skipped
across your surface light as air.

–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. Broken Tulips 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.