Stephen
Rosenshein is a native of Seattle and is currently pursuing his MFA in
Creative Writing at San Francisco State University. He served as Poetry
Editor for Fourteen Hills Magazine and is currently in charge of PR and
author promotions for Small Desk Press. Winner of the Mark Linenthal
Award for Poetry, his poems and translations have appeared in Transfer,
Wooden Teeth, Mortar & Pestle, le Cult de Moi, Foliate Oak and
more. He is currently working on a book-length translation of Chilean
poet Yanko González Cangas.
I wrote
this piece while traveling through South America. I was in Buenos
Aires at the Recoleta Cemetery and the words of Borges were echoing in
my head. I wanted to write a piece that would capture the image
impressed on me by this maze of ornate and noble tombs. As I
wrote and rewrote this poem, I found myself focusing more and more
closely on one moment of time and space, until I found myself writing
from inside the mausoleum itself.