Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

Queer Poem-a-Day is a program from the Adult Services Department at the Library and may include adult language.

Eclogue: A Field Guide and Cure

by Marcelo Hernandez Castillo

If {Maps – borders = debt} then
I am required to tell you
I have family serving life without parole
In Folsom Prison.

In your imagination of their crimes,
for you have already imagined them,
there must be a bronze bell.
It behooves you
to imagine it ring
and the rain that follows.

It rained and we did nothing about it—
the court said there is no further explanation needed.

Let’s say his name
is indecipherable
from the names of the plants.

Let’s say I haven’t
spoken his name out loud.
Yerba Santa, Chapparal Broom.

His time and his procurement like blue division
As in departing from a common source,
a house inside another house.

So we arrive.
If {tragedy + time = comedy}then
six hummingbirds are nailed to a wall.

The prison museum was named The Big House.
I went to school where the football stadium
was also called The Big House,
where people screamed and screamed.

If {comedy – time = tragedy}then
there is shame here but not how you might imagine it.
Black sunflower seeds evenly placed on a table,
the sound of them opening and closing
like the palms of a careful priest
if and only if {shame – comedy = time}

Yerba Santa, Black locust for fever,
Eaten for the tumors that grow
in whatever empty space was left in your body.

Emetic sweet gum used
and is an analgesic to move
the pain in your mouth in circles
until it feels like stirring a large pot
of warm broth in winter.

The gold bell ringing mad
If and only if {Wealth + Comedy ≥  Madness}

You are lovely in the eyes of the state.

Henceforth my job is to imagine a crime
absolved by the oils of sweet gum—
anointed, the hummingbird
now no longer turning its head—
in deference of madness because
{Breath – Time > Tragedy}

The court recommends an explanation.
The last bird thrumming like a nervous finger
I document the oldest tree in existence.
I run into a bell flower,
I run into a field and clamor of bells.

About the Author

Marcelo Hernandez Castillo is the author of Children of the Land: a Memoir (Harper Collins); Cenzontle (BOA Editions), winner of the A. Poulin, Jr. prize; Dulce (Northwestern University Press), winner of the Drinking Gourd Prize; and, most recently, he is the co-editor of the anthology Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial). He is the 2025 guest editor of the Michigan Quarterly Review and has also curated the Academy of American Poet’s Poem-A-Day Series. His work has been long listed for the California Book Award, the Foreword Indies Prize, and the Lambda Literary Award, among other recognitions.

He was the first undocumented student to graduate from the Helen Zell Writers Program at the University of Michigan and co-founded the Undocupoets, which eliminated citizenship requirements from all major poetry book prizes in the U.S., and for which he was recognized with the Barnes and Noble Writers for Writers award.

Queer Poem a Day

Queer Poem-a-Day is founded and co-directed by poet and professor Lisa Hiton and Dylan Zavagno, Adult Services Coordinator at the Library and host of the Deerfield Public Library Podcast. Music for this fifth year of our series is “L’Ange Verrier” from Le Rossignol Éperdu by Reynaldo Hahn, performed by pianist Daniel Baer. Queer Poem-a-Day is supported by generous donations from the Friends of the Deerfield Public Library and the Deerfield Fine Arts Commission.