"The Middle Ages" by Blas Falconer
The Middle Ages
“Saben Más Que Las Arañas” —a Puerto Rican expression What do spiders know that we don’t after twenty years. The hair on the back of your neck bristles beneath my fingertips. No one cares. Last spring you knelt in the grass to plant flowers along the curb. Tonight, it’s littered with trash. I want you to kiss me like that.
Audio: Blas Falconer reads “The Middle Ages”
Blas Falconer is the author of four poetry collections, including Rara Avis, winner of the Thom Gunn Award, and most recently, the translator of Mariano Zaro’s Padre Tierra (Artepoética Press, 2025). Falconer is a coeditor of two essay collections, The Other Latin@: Writing Against a Singular Identity and Mentor and Muse: Essays from Poets to Poets. His awards include a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship, the Maureen Egen Writers Exchange Award, and a Tennessee Individual Artist Grant. He teaches in the MFA at San Diego State University and is the editor-in-chief of Poetry International Online.