Iliana Rocha

Iliana Rocha Poems

Iliana Rocha Biography

Iliana Rocha’s work has previously appeared in Puerto del Sol and Yalobusha Review. She earned her MFA in poetry from Arizona State University, where she was poetry editor for Hayden’s Ferry Review. She taught composition and rhetoric at Arizona State and developmental writing at South Mountain Community College. Rocha is currently a PhD candidate in English and creative writing at Western Michigan University.)

The Best Poem Of Iliana Rocha

Elegy 2

There is a machine digging into the earth.
Angels surround
the spot like vultures, curious
& hungry, as they mourn the death
of a pond. An ulna
led the searchers here—
the arm-tusk
that washed up on the beaches
of Las Piedras.

The claw chews the dirt
as if to remind, Don't forget
your dinosaur,
as the ground is dry, dense—
in hesitation, it chokes up
leathery lizards & fish bones:

There is something it does not want
to give. What is it about an island
& the constant threat of water
that breeds the cactus' soft
heart, the careful
shells of roaches,
as well as destroys
the only young things left?
We must be getting closer
to cracking

the nucleus. The machine
digs, while the rest of us wait
& say, Tell us
what the treasure is.

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