Andrés Montoya

"…and i am learning to hope like a bird learns its first affair with wind and sun like an orange learns to take flight into the mouth of a boy in summer…"

"i have found the face of story lying again. i’m tired. i’m a moth on sunday. i’m rain looking for a cup’s crippled rim…"

"The late Andrés Montoya was my first influence, and the largest…He believed that poetry fueled personal, societal and cultural liberation. He wrote about the downtrodden, the poor, the factory workers and the drug-addicted. He beautified what some deemed ugly and taught me that poetry is for all the people around you. I saw what language could do. We talked for hours about poetry, politics and race. I had found my first brother in poetry…"