S is For

By William Archila

S is For is an investigation by poet William Archila of the Central American migrant crisis haunted by the past of the civil war in El Salvador, the meanings of family spirits, and trees disappearing to urban sprawl—always wielding the voice of the immigrant, the refugee, and the ever-present exile as a weapon against invisibility and displacement. Inventive and compassionate, Archila’s poems navigate the meanings of family spirits, weeds and wildflowers, and the irreverence to lay down roots with our dead. The collection expresses the importance of an inner voice from the perspective of exile—people with no country, no language, ghosts split between present and past, between home and foreign. In a variety of forms—quasi-sonnet, sestina, ekphrastic, syllabic, lyric, memorial—the poems create a bridge between flaws and fractures, between the northern region of Central America and the beloved north which is the US. S is for: every letter never uttered, but evoked.