Erik Manuel Soto
Summer 2025 | Poetry
Flung
with palm-sized weasels
and summer lasting purslanes—
a plum frenzy insists
on Freudian slips
as anti-elegiac mumbles.
Intrusive thoughts
as iridescent awakening;
an alluring insurgency in tandem
with moonspin
or unearthly legs.
The surge to incite
vice and spine,
unholy magnetism and gamble.
To irrigate magnolias
willing to stain their leaves
with presidential blood.
Entice ivory spears
dreaming to be young bulls,
the impatient jaguars
I find in sunset horizons—
I’ll let them hunger
then soon seize the oligarchy.
Erik Manuel Soto is a Mexican-American writer from California. His poems have appeared in Volt, Huizache, Sonora Review, and other magazines and publications. Winner of the inaugural Gronk Nicandro first book prize for poetry, Erik debuts his full length poetry collection, Inside the Umber Iris, in Fall 2025.