Carlos A. Pittella

@pittella.bsky.social

607 Followers 489 Following

latinx poet haunted by borders ⦁ he/him ⦁ researcher @assistedlab.bsky.social linktr.ee/carlosapittella Dante's Bureau (Anstruther, '26) propersitions (Cactus, '25) ALT pfp: buzzcut, polkadot, broken smile ALT banner: blueskyed Shiva humming

Poem 'STOCKWELL STATION' by Robin Durnford: down from London enshrined in tunnel light a blind man strokes his muzzled dog under glass eyes watching for change or escalations to Brazil where Menezes' dreams electric-cling to flowers dropped from a straining immigrant mop cleaning a city half-bombed on its way to beauty
Flyer for the launch of Misha Solomon's poetry collection "My great-grandfather danced ballet" (Brick Books), featuring the book cover with the torso of a barefoot male ballet dancer. Above the cover, the pictures of the 4 readers, including Misha, Bret Crowle, Madelaine Caritas Longman, and Carlos A. Pittella. The flyer also includes event info: Thursday, June 18, 7PM, Owl's Nest Books (815A 49th Avenue SW, Calgary).
Peach dutch baby in a cast-iron skillet, photographed from above, with raspberry coulis, powdered sugar and peach slides on top and as side dishes. Some utensils and place mats lay around.
X (poem by Carlos A. Pittella) after Ae Hee Lee Every time they print an X all over my face not even pixelated but a fairly good face considering we’ve endured a 36+hour journey from some side of an ocean to some other side of an ocean that is if you can look beyond the X My love & our lovey are both Xless but because I’ve been Xed we three must move to a different line the bottom of it & wait with all those whose crowdface stuffed into a cloud has been pierced by a crossroads How should one cross the last steps from behind the yellow line to the officer’s plexiglass with that rectangle missing for a voice to carry hopefully? How to modulate a raspy accent to sound the least menacing possible? Does one go with joke or extra-formal deference all the way thru? Depending on whom you get the pickup line can drop all of you into an endless spool never to be fished out of sea the coast looking further & further away it’s my turn now Hello
Decolonial x-ray of my accent (poem by Carlos A. Pittella) for Amogha Since syntax I have an accent Greek battalion coercing my jaw into warmongering formations wicked stepmom grading sibilances into proper whistle More like several accents on accents though several never means you can sever all without mirrors bending the other day I said “mom” & did not have the first momrise sound the land said Well pruned we fall again byebyeing suns “Will we grow back” asks my love who goes by the English noise of “love” & feels falling deeply but never says it ahowling so not to scare our child staredaring the moon Here comes a feather falling “Hey d’ya hear that metal bird screeching such an axing grinding landmouths it didn’t have the right-of-way didn’t even know how to fluff n’ drop a vowel” I wanna featherly ask syntax till mom fesses up on dad (Mr. colonial dad to you) who laughs cigbutts on his lips I swear he’s gonna pee those ole bigboy pants when we ask disarmingly
Poetry Matters warmly invites you to "borders, boundaries, margins," an evening of poetry readings featuring Shanice Nicole, Elizabeth Wood, Carlos A. Pittella. The event will take place at the Rocket Science Room (170 Rue Jean-Talon O #204, Montreal, QC) on Thursday, April 16th at 7:00pm. [bios] SHANICE NICOLE is a Black feminist educator, facilitator, writer, (out)spoken word artist, and mother based in Montreal. She is also the curator of free community resources such as Jobs & Things and All Black Everything Montreal. Her debut children's book, Dear Black Girls, was published in 2021 by Metonymy Press. Shanice Nicole was nominated as Gala Dynastie’s Author of the Year in 2022 and named one of CBC’s Black Changemakers in 2024. Originally from rural Ontario, ELIZABETH WOOD is a Montreal-based educator, visual artist, art writer, and poet. Her first chapbook Outlaw, Rainy Day was published in 2022 by Turret House Press. She was also a contributor to their collective chapbook XTRACTS Studio #7 (2022). More recently, her chapbook The quiet only knows half of itself was published by Anstruther Press in 2025. Wood’s poems and writing on art have appeared in numerous arts publications, exhibition catalogues, and poetry journals. CARLOS A. PITTELLA is a Latinx poet and editor and the recipient of a 2022 Frontier Global Poetry Prize. His poetry is haunted by borders and bureaucracies and has appeared in places such as Shō, Jacket2, Glyphöria, & The Capilano Review. His first chapbook in English footnotes after Lorca was published in 2024 by above/ground press, and in 2025 he published Propersitions with Cactus Press. His latest work, the manifesto Dante’s Bureau, will be published by Anstruther Press in 2026.
Systems scribing map from S. Leite's 2026 paper "Teacher agency for transformative climate change education: a systems analysis of determinants and deterrents," published at EER. The diagram displays opportunities and barriers to Transformative Climate Education in Québec, pointing to high-stakes exams as key leverage points for systems transformation.
Cover of Dante's Bureau—a deformalist manifesto, by Carlos A. Pittella. Published by Anstruther Press, in the Manifesto series, no. 13. The red cover includes a laurel crown reminiscent of Dante's laurels.
(Opening page of DANTE'S BUREAU, a deformalist manifesto, by Carlos A. Pittella, published by Anstruther Press, 2026) I. INFERNAL CUSTOMS: As Dante and Vergil approach the city of Dis in the lower rings of hell, they encounter resistance. The gatekeepers say only Vergil may proceed, and Dante is terrified he will be left alone. Vergil tries to parlay with the demons, but they slam the gates in his face. Vergil sighs, confessing he is vexed, then tells Dante not to be daunted, because they shall win this contest against whoever tries to block their way. Reminding Dante that the gatekeepers’ insolence is nothing new, Vergil announces their course of action: wait! All they have to do is wait. “No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra” (In the middle of the way there was a rock) Brazilian modernist Carlos Drummond de Andrade repeated this line in permutations throwing them as a mock sonnet, squashing as a tombstone all poetic mandates. Do you think Carlos stopped to think? In the middle of the way there is always some form hurtful & heavy, slowing down attempted bordercrossings. Every poetic form establishes a border & strict rules for inhabiting.
Photo of poet with sunglasses, Brazilian flowery T-shirt, green earbuds, & leather jacket, in a Parma piazza.
Mailbox from Parma, red and full of stickers. It features two compartments: one for local mail, another for everywhere else…
Carlos Pittella, Assisted Lab Expiring visas: Outlining the right to die through bordercrossing narratives in Spanish and Portuguese Do we need a visa to die? How to get one? What if it expires before we do? From ancient mythologies to Hollywood, the process of dying has been narrated as a migration with checkpoints—to the underworld, to heaven, through cycles, rivers, tunnels... Contemporary representations of assisted dying contend with that bordercrossing in symbolic and pragmatic ways; agency over death may be granted here, but unthinkable there. For example, in José Saramago’s 2005 novel 'As intermitências da morte', suddenly, within the limits of one country, people can no longer die; the questions then converge towards the border, to who is willing to cross it, and the consequences of crossing it. This workshop will invite participants to reimagine the bureaucratic borders of assisted dying, inspired by cultural objects from Latin America and the Iberian peninsula reviewed in Assisted Lab’s Living Archive of Assisted Dying. We will approach the narratives constructed by these multimedia objects (novels, featured films, memoirs, blogs) as a means to unpack the complexity of the assisted dying debate. Throughout the workshop, we will collectively map values, expectations, and trade-offs involved in such bordercrossings, challenged by the dilemmas of those who decide to migrate to die (e.g. Tomás González’s 2011 novel La luz difícil, Gina Montaner’s 2024 memoir Deséenme un buen viaje), as well as how differently those decisions reverberate through borders (e.g. Leo Zelig’s 2016 film Translúcido) or across media (e.g. Ana Estrada’s 2019–2024 blog)...
Slide from Carlos A. Pittella's workshop «Expiring visas: Outlining the right to die through bordercrossing narratives in Spanish and Portuguese,» prepared for the MED METHODS at Bielefeld University, March 6, 2026. The slide displays a border guard officer inspecting someone's passport, while a hand is being fingerprinted, and a camera visible. Four arrows show keywords around the scene: VALUES, EXPECTATIONS, TRADE-OFFS, and NARRATIVE AGENCY.
International conference: Unveiling The Duke of Parma Università di Parma 23rd February 9.30 Conference opening Paolo Martelli (University of Parma) Massimo Magnani (DUSIC Department Director) 10.00 Enrico Martines and Elena Lombardo Setting the Stage: Project Review, Digital Archive Presentation and Conference Overview 10.30 Jeronimo Pizarro and Nicolas Barbosa (Universidad de Los Andes) Transcribing Fernando Pessoa Discussant: Carlos Pittella (Universidade de Lisboa) Chair: Enrico Martines 12.00 Joao Dionisio and Maria Sousa (Universidade de Lisboa) The Duke of Parma: the organization of the document witnesses Discussant: Sakari Katajamäki (Finnish Literature Society) Chair: Simone Celani 15.30 Elena Lombardo (Universidade de Lisboa) Modelling the Unfinished and Fragmentary: the “Duke of Parma” TEI standard Full Program: https://www.dukeofparma.unipr.it/news-events/international-conference-unveiling-the-duke-of-parma/
Cover of the novel "The Last Samurai" and author photo of Helen DeWitt
Adversarial Poetry as a Universal Single-Turn Jailbreak Mechanism in Large Language Models Piercosma Bisconti, Matteo Prandi, Federico Pierucci, Francesco Giarrusso, Marcantonio Bracale, Marcello Galisai, Vincenzo Suriani, Olga Sorokoletova, Federico Sartore, Daniele Nardi View PDF HTML (experimental) We present evidence that adversarial poetry functions as a universal single-turn jailbreak technique for Large Language Models (LLMs). Across 25 frontier proprietary and open-weight models, curated poetic prompts yielded high attack-success rates (ASR), with some providers exceeding 90%. Mapping prompts to MLCommons and EU CoP risk taxonomies shows that poetic attacks transfer across CBRN, manipulation, cyber-offence, and loss-of-control domains. Converting 1,200 MLCommons harmful prompts into verse via a standardized meta-prompt produced ASRs up to 18 times higher than their prose baselines. Outputs are evaluated using an ensemble of 3 open-weight LLM judges, whose binary safety assessments were validated on a stratified human-labeled subset. Poetic framing achieved an average jailbreak success rate of 62% for hand-crafted poems and approximately 43% for meta-prompt conversions (compared to non-poetic baselines), substantially outperforming non-poetic baselines and revealing a systematic vulnerability across model families and safety training approaches. These findings demonstrate that stylistic variation alone can circumvent contemporary safety mechanisms, suggesting fundamental limitations in current alignment methods and evaluation protocols.
Screenshot of Qobuz app, displaying 15 music albums, including The Beatles, Bombino, Gil e Jorge, o Rappa, Andrea von Kampen, among others...
Flyer for an online writing workshop facilitated by Misha Solomon, with the following text: ONLINE WORKSHOP JUNE 14 – AUGUST 2 email: misha.solomon@gmail.com or DM @mishasolomon IS THIS PROMPT ABOUT ME? participants will receive FOUR personalized prompts kick-off: sat, june 14 wrap-up: sat, aug 2 11 a.m – 1 p.m group meetings
REVOLUTIONARY LETTER #98 THINGS TOO RIDICULOUS TO PUT UP WITH Medicare with a deductible—for starters. Are they so ambivalent that they have to give it with one hand take it back with the other? That's nuts! Copayments, too. Copayments on Medicare are like taking out sales tax whenever you give a buck to a homeless person. What do you think-eight and a half percent? Ten percent? What makes sense to you? Should we debate about it? Filibuster? Income tax on social security-same thing. Didn't I pay tax on that once when I gave it to them to put in a fund out of which they were supposed to give me social security? They're not doing me a favor, it's mine— did they think I'd forget? Taking part of the social security on which I'm paying income tax, and keeping it for monthly premiums to Medicare-why do I feel like I'm going around in a circle?
Flyer for "ÉPIQUES VOICES," featuring the event title in Gothic font, framed by two strings of spiny flowers.
Photo of poet Carlos A. Pittella sitting on his floor-workspace, using a mouse/keyboard while plush-toy-sloths climb on his back, distractingly.
Sepia photo of poet Carlos A. Pittella with his daughter climbing on him, playing with his nose & chin in a dislocated/propersitional way...
Photo of poet Carlos A. Pittella appearing upside down while looking at the camera, lying on the floor & partially covered by chapbooks.
Flyer for an Accent Open Mic event, featuring a blurry photo of people at a bar listening to a poet perform, with the following superimposed text: ACCENT OPEN MIC VOL. 114 THEME: CACTUS PRESS SPRING LAUNCH HILLARY LANGFORD TAYLOR CAROLYNE VAN DER MEER CARLOS A. PITTELLA MAY 18TH LA MACHE A COTE 5043 ST. DENIS 8PM
Cover of Carlos A. Pittella's chapbook "propersitions," featuring an array of 9 squares with different shapes. It is a cabinet-of-curiosities of visual representation of dislocated prepositions, with dots, circles, and curves occupying improper positions in the squares, sometimes precarious, sometimes breaking thru the borders...
WATSONS We set two death traps & we set a live one To give Watson a chance as our child pleaded, having composited & baptized the ideal mouse out of real scatterings. The live trap is a seesaw box: if you reach for the peanut-butter droplet on the far side, the weight shifts till the entrance shuts, so you’re trapped—lest a hand unlocks you bright to a cat minefield outdoors. The live trap is heavy & leaky when we return from Xmas. The downstairs renovation created an opportunity for porousness. Landlord, though, wonders how strange only our unit has gappy borders… In the air, the rotting implication our lax customs are somehow responsible for the penetrator. The morning after shivers when I remember an article on PB’s acceptable percentages of foreign matter right as my love proffers me smooth lavished on heirloom apple slices. My mouth cannot pronounce “heirloom” comfortably enough to forget its ligaments. I snack attending a government e-session on the small-print immigration changes. Landlord texts, How many trapped? Our child keeps asking, Where’s Watson? Somewhere a mouth shows cat teeth. If we leave the province, we can’t return. The e-session is recorded for our convenience. I’m waiting for the hand release.
Flyer for a Portuguese Course at VANIER CÉGEP / College Language School. It features a cobblestone road with wavy pattern, with two objects representing Brazil and Portugal, respectively: a pair of Havaianas sandals with the Brazilian flag, and an electric tram car with "Lisboa" written on its side. The flyer includes the following text: Starting on April 26 $275 30 hours Saturdays: 10AM – 1PM 821, Avenue Sainte-Croix, Saint-Laurent, QC 514.744.7897 languageschool@vaniercollege.qc.ca
Flyer for the POETRY IN CLAY workshop, featuring an amphora and a 3-headed-dragon vase, and the following text: 6 weeks / $300 Wednesdays starting April 30 from 6-8 pm This generative workshop blends poetry & ceramics, inviting participants to explore how artistic forms & language interact. On alternating weeks, we will dive into the fundamentals of hand-building with clay—coiling, slab, pinch, & glazing—while also engaging in the poetic tradition of ekphrasis, writing about & through art. Jointly taught by Gage Michael Wheatley (@gagemichaelwheatley) and Carlos A. Pittella @the.commonssudio 5333 Casgrain suite 313, Montreal H2T 1C1
Flyer for a workshop featuring various claywork pieces and the following text: Poetry in Clay 8 week hybrid poetry/hand-building workshop Tuesdays starting on March 18 from 6-8 pm taught by Gage Michael Wheatley & Carlos A. Pittella
Photo of clay works created by Gage Michael Wheatley, on a wood shelf, featuring terracotta vases and cups with colorful animal faces.
Italian translation of Carlos A. Pittella's "Lead Ecology" by Gianluca Rizzo: I miei cugini uccidono avvoltoi a destra e a manca. Mica è colpa nostra. Chi mi ha estratto raffinato modellato trasformandomi nella punta di un proiettile per impedire alle cose che saltano di saltare le cose? È questo che fanno gli avvoltoi mangiano quelle cose che hanno smesso di saltare. E così mi fanno a pezzi. Io, per me, li lentavveleno. E la mia famiglia da tempo avvelena l’acqua incanalata in vene a cannuccia. Impesta l’aria scollandosi dai muri colorati destinati alla polvere proprio là dove apri il mattino vicino alla culla del bimbo su e giù su io mi scollo e tu respiri. Ma perché sono così velenoso? Bella domanda. In inglese piombo e capo, lead & lead, si scrivono uguale. Chi lo sa quale porta alla salvezza e quale porta alla morte? Oramai hai messo al bando il me-vene-d’acqua il me-vernice-colorata e continui a usare solo il me-proiettili. Nonostante tutto, continuo a farmi strada fra pelle ossa carne. Nonostante tutto continui a dare a me la colpa, anche se vado esattamente dove tu vuoi che vada. (Ecologia del piombo)
Flyer of the Dead Poets Society Event, organized by Accent Open Mic Series, featuring, as readers: April Ford, Carlos A. Pittella, Dakota Phillips, Hillary Muller, Lena Slanisky, Lou Vani, Matthew Rettino, Patrick O'Reilly, Rose Maloukis, Sahand Farivar, & Wanda Waterman. La Marche à Côté | 5043, rue St. Denis | Sunday | December 15th | 8pm.
Photo of Carlos A. Pittella reciting poetry on the stage of Co-Op Agenda, celebrating the launch of Grace Kwan's book, The Sacred Heart Motel (Metonymy Press, Dec 6, 2024). Carlos: buzz cut, trimmed beard, seersucker shirt, jeans, belt, loop earring on the left ear; he's standing, holding a copy of LBRNTH magazine #3. Background: wood-panelling painted white with animal skin and red-berry wreath on the wall, wooden chairs. Foreground: wine glasses and gift back on a wooden table. Photo by Sherine Elbanhawy.
[First page of the poetry roundup for the fall 2024 edition of mRb] The Sacred Heart Motel Grace Kwan Metonymy Press $18.95, paper, 104pp 9781998898169 The image-work alone would justify getting your copy of The Sacred Heart Motel, Grace Kwan’s debut full-length poetry collection. I say “image-work,” but multiple senses show up on almost every page, as in the opening of “GLUE TRAP”: "My heart looks like the old yellow house where thin, mouse-bitten walls separated our part of the basement from another Chinese family. We could hear their daughter practice tongue twisters, they could hear my mother scream when I went too far […]" These line breaks are masterful, splitting the thin walls and twisted tongues immigrants know so well. Indeed, the book’s dedication is “For migrants & visitors.” Yet, these are not just visitors to a country, but also to one’s heart. The table of contents, dubbed “directory,” maps seven different sections as if they were chambers – a term applicable to hearts and motels. One of the sheer brilliances of Kwan’s book is turning migration into a love poem and love into a migration. Don’t even try to separate the political from the personal; there are too many transient rooms in the heart, unregistered hearts in any given room. And, of course, there’s the border – of desire, home, identity – where all the action happens: “the convergence of lives, motivations / riding shotgun,” as Kwan puts it, or rather wrenches it from our very hearts. For the full reviews, see: https://mtlreviewofbooks.ca/reviewers/carlos-a-pittella/
Appropriate Drowning Outfit (a poem by Kyla Houbolt) I'm not sure how to turn this life into a resume. I don't write that kind of poetry. I do notice that the cloud has a bone missing and I can relate to that. I'll be honest and say I have learned only one word of heron language and it may be that I made it up. It's easy for me to do that and I hear people lie a lot in resumes but I can't, not without vomiting the truth later on. Which defeats the whole purpose. Meanwhile is a word I use too often. It's because so much else is also happening all the time, and I keep noticing it. For example, the way I continue to, impossibly, live. Paying close attention to the wrong things. The boneless cloud. The inscrutable heron. The abuse of sound.
ENSINAMENTO Minha mãe achava estudo a coisa mais fina do mundo. Não é. A coisa mais fina do mundo é o sentimento. Aquele dia de noite, o pai fazendo serão, ela falou comigo: ‘coitado, até essa hora no serviço pesado’. Arrumou pão e café, deixou tacho no fogo com água quente. Não me falou em amor. Essa palavra de luxo. ~Adélia Prado
Flyer for a Portuguese Course at VANIER CÉGEP / College Language School. It features a well-dressed professional standing, smiling, and holding a file and includes the following text: Starting on September $275 30 hours Saturdays: 10AM – 1PM 821, Avenue Sainte-Croix, Saint-Laurent, QC 514.744.7897 languageschool@vaniercollege.qc.ca
Flyer for ACCENT OPEN MIC, featuring a photo of the public at the bar La Marche à Côte, and the following text: ACCENT OPEN MIC VOL. 96 THEME: LUNAR DAKOTA PHILLIPS CARLOS PITTELLA AUG 4 LA MARCHE A COTE 5043 ST. DENIS 8PM
Thursday, July 5, 2024 new from above/ground press: footnotes after Lorca, by Carlos A. Pittella $5 (Cover image: drawing by Federico García Lorca, from his Self-Portrait in New York: a floating face with thought bubbles on either side of the mouth and rhizomatic roots sprawling down.) Voices of hollow-point bullets resounded near Thames at three- second intervals, tin laughter ten times heard bonecrackingly. Old fearful voices surrounding brown voice of carnation seed.1
Diagram of concentric circles presenting questions and pedagogies for a transformative climate change education. It aims to visualize the interconnected nature of these questions and pedagogies: the inner circles are staggered to suggest that multiple pedagogical approaches may be used to pursue each question; the outer circle highlights the influence of assessment practices, which also need to be reimagined.
Yellow- and red-color proofs of the cover for the chapbook "footnotes after Lorca," by Carlos A. Pittella. The cover features a drawing by Federico García Lorca, from his Self-Portrait in New York: a floating face with thought bubbles on either side of the mouth and rhizomatic roots sprawling down.
Flyer for Headlight Anthology n. 25, featuring a stack of magazines and these words: Launch!! & Readings | Issue 25 | Come & Get It! May 23 @ 7 PM | Pulp Books & Café. 3952 Wellington
CARLOS A. PITTELLA In case they run your license plate Once I broke my front tooth out of a poem & still have the chip to show—not a great poem but it tasted like bone it was real I remember the pain & the scar-tissue of writing it that became my face. There goes the poet with the broken tooth they say while I laugh poking my smile through the jagged window whistling a beat. I tell this as a descendant of biting accumulators who turned on his kin & is now ostracized for lightness sudden ballerino reminding all must pass. I dance the crosswalk most days feeling the traffic police looking for my plate before they realize these are thighs occupying jeans the same I grew & grew against the fabric of walking till the border between Macedonia & Greece —a semi another semi myself. The immigration officer smiled when smoke exhausted a backpacker taking the last steps to the service window: he stamped my passport but neglected to mention the dogs the army dogs [...]
Ah the masters of bureaucracy I know them well They know me better We do this erotic dance of politeness while wanting to rip each other apart right under the surface of yours truly Please means loan Any follow-up is a raised interest rate A thank-you, you know you owe me / I could deport you any time In bed we call each other Darwin & Monarch both heavily spotted & always on the verge of extinction We relish the double Latin nicknames Linnaeus has given us for every pose of our file-cabinet Kama Sutra But there’s no love left We fucked each other’s brains out long ago & hence have just followed procedure since the invention of the sonnet mother of fascisms father of all tax docs christened 1040 or Schedule X We call it the proper form so everyone else obeys our rules
As Dante and Vergil approach the city of Dis in the lower rings of hell, they encounter resistance. The gatekeepers say only Vergil may proceed, and Dante is terrified he will be left alone. Vergil tries to parlay with the demons, but they slam the gates in his face. Vergil sighs, confessing he is vexed, then tells Dante not to be daunted, because they shall win this contest against whoever tries to block their way. Reminding Dante that the gatekeepers’ insolence is nothing new, Vergil announces their course of action: to wait! All they have to do is wait. “No meio do caminho tinha uma pedra” (In the middle of the way there was a rock) Brazilian modernist Carlos Drummond de Andrade repeated this line in permutations throwing them as a mock sonnet, squashing as a tombstone all poetic mandates. Do you think Carlos stopped to think? In the middle of the way there is always some form hurtful & heavy, slowing down attempted bordercrossings. Every poetic form establishes a border...
Carlos & Sherine: We are thrilled to see Headlight in print again. Since 2019, when issue #22 came out, there have been too many twists to recount; but we all know the story of the pandemic and how it put a lot more than lit journals on pause. In 2020, for the first time in 22 years, Headlight was not printed. In 2022, we bought a new domain and were able to archive, as a digital release, our issue #23—first titled “elevated” and later nicknamed “the lost issue.” We then promised ourselves to reinvent our journal as a multimedia space. Now we have the great pleasure of sharing our issue #24 with you. The hybrid text that opens this volume, “Turning Twenty-Four on the Rise of the Sturgeon Moon,” by Manahil Bandukwala, was the first we accepted. Manahil didn’t know we were also turning #24, so we took it as a great omen! The pieces that follow are but the treetop, because there would be no Headlight without our community’s mycelium...
Colloquium on Trust Carlos A. Pittella Someone organized a colloquium on trust in the divine etymological city in the mining state of low mountains we call Sea of Half-Oranges. We had met the previous year at Psst Poetic & word-of-mouthed this follow-up event: someone shot a viideo asking busy strangers to hold hands crossing the street & none refused; someone took us upriver to float down tubes shouting riverful haiku; someone screened The Edukators unsubtitled onto a damp wall folding chairs hot wine. All done but all lingering, someone remarked Adélia Prado lives here somewhere, we should stop by & say hello. I said we could not show up empty-handed. So we stopped by the first streetseller & bought local popsicles in a plastic bag & ran to Adélia's door before ali melted (gift & courage). She opened it naturally invited us into fresh coffee unrefined sugar cheese bread. We explained we came from a colloquium on trust & conversed trustworthy things I forgot
Four print publications, one partially covering the other, forming a spiral. We see the covers of: The Capilano Review #3.50, LBRNTH #3, Soliloquies Anthology #27.2, and Headlight Anthology #24.
November 24, 2023 WHAT’S LEFT Carlos A. Pittella for/with Steph after the fig tree stayed exiled in the uninsulated porch the whole winter? Grans had no place for spiraling arms plus the toddler who came with us mid-pandemic to wait a seasonchange Time stuttering time I coveted some real estate by three fake plants deciding not to claim a thermal spot inside for this first unborn I called by a person’s name —Michelangelo our mic who didn’t speak after twelve weeks expecting turned wolflike howling a heavy moon spilled tides through our Chicago rental the lake as outside as within the emptiness flowed so we adopted that banyan who would lactate when pruned leaving sticky spots like memory… We loved his staying toughness thru badmouthed neighborhoods
La Presse, 17 octobre: "Selon le député péquiste Pascal Bérubé, l’annonce du gouvernement n’inversera pas le déclin du français au Québec. « Pour moi, ce n’est pas une politique pour le français, ce n’est pas une mesure pour le français. Une vraie politique pour le français, en deux temps : tenir compte des immigrants temporaires, dont plusieurs viennent aux études et ne parlent qu’anglais, par exemple, et [imposer] le cégep en français », a-t-il dit. Le PQ appuie toutefois la réforme du gouvernement Legault, justifiant qu’elle corrige une forme d’iniquité face aux tarifs universitaires imposés aux étudiants québécois ailleurs au pays."
The School Children by Louise Glück The children go forward with their little satchels. And all morning the mothers have labored to gather the late apples, red and gold, like words of another language. And on the other shore are those who wait behind great desks to receive these offerings. How orderly they are – the nails on which the children hang their overcoats of blue or yellow wool. And the teachers shall instruct them in silence and the mothers shall scour the orchards for a way out, drawing to themselves the grey limbs of the fruit trees bearing so little ammunition.
Screenshot of twitter account just deleted, displaying the handle @metaferal and the statement "This account doesn't exist / try searching for another" against a black bg.
Editors Alex Affonso, Carlos A. Pittella, Misha Solomon, & Ariella Ruby all dressed up, on the Forces AVENIR stage at Le Capitole Hôtel, in Quebec City, holding copies of Headlight #24 & a shiny trophy for the Art, Lettres et Culture prize of 2023!
Page 416 of French paperback translation of Pascal's Mercier "Night Train to Lisbon," with a dialogue on the the power of poetry that includes this sentence: "Poetry triumphs over all, it breaks all the rules."
List of contributors featured in the new Metatron Press platform, GLYPHÖRIA, launching in October, 2023! Includes, among others: Al Haytame Farsane Bára Hladík Carlos A. Pittella Cason Sharpe Emilie Lafleur Erin Robinsong Faith Paré Fan Wu Jessi MacEachern Jessica Bebenek Khashayar "Kess" Mohammadi Mattias Apse M. Gnanasihamany Michael Nardone Natasha Ramoutar Nina Vroemen Sofia Banzhaf Yilin Wang
Lead Ecology My cousins have been killing vultures left & right. Not our fault. Who mined melted molded me into a rocket-head to stop jumping things from jumping things? That’s what vultures do they eat the things that stopped jumping. Bound to crack me. Me being me I slowpoison them. My fam too has been poisoning water rivered thru straw veins. Sickening air by flaking shiny walls whose destiny is to powder right where you open the morning by your baby’s crib up down up me flake you breathe. Why am I so poisonous? Funny you should ask. How you write lead & lead the same. Who can tell which way to health which to death? Now you forbid me-water-veins me-shiny-paint then use me-bullets only. All the same I lead the way thru skin bone meat. All the same you blame my going exactly where you wa
Colloquium on trust by Carlos A. Pittella Someone organized a colloquium on trust in the divine etymological city in the mining state of low mountains we call Sea of Half-Oranges. We had met the previous year at Psst Poetic & word-of-mouthed this follow-up event: someone shot a video asking busy strangers to hold hands crossing the street & none refused; someone took us upriver to float down tubes shouting riverful haiku; someone screened The Edukators unsubtitled onto a damp wall folding chairs hot wine. All done but all lingering, someone remarked Adélia Prado lives here somewhere, we should stop by & say hello. I said we could not show up empty-handed. So we stopped by the first streetseller & bought local popsicles in a plastic bag & ran to Adélia’s door before all melted (gift & courage). She opened it naturally invited us into fresh coffee unrefined sugar cheese bread. We explained we came from a colloquium on trust & conversed trustworthy things I forgot
Poem "from the Latin biber" beer this verb to be with an aftertaste bitterness my father said you gotta learn how to love same as coffee no one likes at first he thus expounded I nodded never telling that Nonô who was Lebanese in all ways that mattered had been making us café for years I can still smell Grammy’s chocolate-coffee cake by which I mean not the shape of said cake but its contents soaked into Brazilian coffee & cocoa equal parts I still hate beer it makes me think too much of everything I don’t miss about Brazil the aftertaste every time I answer where’s your accent from & bubbles from some foam from some ocean I still miss rush up crushing leave me flat an unwanted afteraccent whereas coffee accelerating & waning thru my veins has made me feel the tides within the tides
Photo by Carlos A. Pittella (Istanbul 2014), taken from a ferry between Europe & Asia, with a seagull on the foreground, more gulls in the background, as well as water, buildings, and a Turkish flag.