Selected Poetry Untitled 127 Arthritic Fingers A Cold Day in Moscow, 1847 Bookworm Disowned

Julian Esteban Torres

by Tim Greenlaw

Julian Esteban Torres stands behind the microphone in a large room. Earlier there had been 130 people, but only 15 people had lingered through the night. He begins to perform a poem. His voice trembles with a slight Spanish accent as the words begin to flow. His arms spin around his torso. His left leg pumps up and down. I barley heard the words, but I knew they were powerful. His poetry was exploding through the mic. The audience did not know what to think. This was Slam poetry, and Julian Esteban brought it to the University of New Hampshire.

That night was an open mic coffeehouse organized by Residential Life at UNH. Julian Esteban and I were both RA's going through fall training, and this was my first glimpse of Julian Esteban's power as a poet. In time we began to work together on planning events like coffeehouses and poetry slams, events for people to express themselves freely and openly. We also began to workshop each others poetry.

It was through our weekly poetry workshops I got to see Julian Esteban move towards becoming a pure poet. When I met Julian Esteban in September his poems were long and complex. He studies philosophy and he integrated many of the concepts he was learning into his poetry. However, many of these pieces were not concise enough to convey the ideas effectively. The form he embraced at the time, performance poetry, had to be narrative in nature. They were poems that a listener had to get on the first reading. The problem was that his poems were so long and complex, it was difficult for a listener or reader to get the finer details. He had great subjects. His poems were effective pieces of literature. But if Julian Esteban wanted to become a great poet there was a need to craft his words into a tight package. Without losing the power of his longer pieces.

The defining moment for this shift from stage to page came on a Wednesday afternoon last March. Julian Esteban and a group of his friends traveled to Cambridge Mass to the Can-tab Lounge. The Can-tab is a nationally known center for poets and musicians. Every year they send a team to the National Poetry Slam. And, although it is a venue for Slam, the audience at the Can-tab truly listens to the words and appreciates great poetry more than a great performance. That night Julian signed up for the open mic and began to read:

I retrace my steps and here I am,
back to Chapter One
on the mountain tops of Andes,
a day away from meeting my mother.

For tomorrow I enter the town of my birth,
or at least that is what I am told,
for I do not remember being born,
but I do remember being alive.

This is an excerpt from the poem "Medellin," which is named for the town in Colombia where Julian Esteban was born. This is the piece that shifted Julian Esteban's poetry from pure performance to a more traditional style of poetry. The poem is a mental journey back to his roots in Columbia. The poem represents Julian Esteban's search for his personal history. This search is a theme that runs throughout much of his poetry. "Medellin" was such a personal expression for him that he did not want anyone to try to corrupt his vision of the poem. So, he wrote it on a whiteboard then copied it to a napkin. He then memorized it and destroyed it. It was only this month that he finally re-committed it to paper.

After "Medellin," Julian Esteban's poetry started to get shorter and more powerful. When the editors received Julian Esteban's submissions for the September issue of the WRIToracle there was only one thing to say: "they were short!" For example, here is Julian Esteban's poem "Heavy Words" in its entirety:

As I held the pen
in contemplation,
my finger's back broke;
for it carried the weight
of all my unspoken thoughts
on its shoulders.

This poem, and the others featured on the WRIToracle are examples of the growth Julian Esteban has made in his writing. His understanding of words and theories have created some fine pieces of poetry. His new styles are more focused, and allow him to better articulate his complex philosophical ideas.

The pieces included below represent more of Julian Esteban's refined talent and ideas. They range from haiku-like insight to philosophical illustrations, dipping into calculated detail throughout. Julian Esteban experiments with theological ideas and scatters his pieces with natural images. He has reached a level in his writing where he can stop and look around, and now, as he does so, he invites us all to read and gain insight from his continued evolution as a poet.

Untitled 127

Her upper lip was Yin,
Her lower ---
        Yang,
Her kiss ---
        A contradiction.

Arthritic Fingers

Through my window
the silhouette of a dead tree
could be seen praying to the sky.

I could relate,
for I too was hopeful.

Intrigued,
I walked over,
sat beneath it
and wrote a letter to God.

A week later,
while I sketched the tree’s arthritic fingers,
(which surprisingly resembled mine),
the mailwoman could be heard walking upon the spines of brittle leaves.

When she finally reached me
I was handed an unmarked envelope ---
(He had written back saying he didn’t exist).

A Cold Day in Moscow, 1847

The wind wears a coat today,
for it has caught a cold.

In the middle of a Moscow winter
even the snowflake shivers.

The puddles of clouds freeze at dusk
creating ice rinks in the skies.

Bookworm

the worm, 
slowly   moves   across   the   page, 
with   the   patience   of   a   meditating   monk, 
and   the   sincerity   of   a   lover, 
experiencing   every   moment, 
salivating   on   every   syllable, 
bringing  together 
HeartandSoul 
with every movement 
of his entire being.

Disowned

The once ocean sky,
suspended above the Sahara
and the Amazon jungle,
has browned

drowned in an attempt
to put out the fire
below.

It now rests
decomposing
in the heavens.

Its bluest eyes---
     dried like lakes,
no more cry with pity,
simply mirror the 
dying 
image
below. 

The sun,
whose glance was once spotted
back-stroking up the Nile,
trying to stay warm atop Mt. Everest,
and drunk off aged wine 
in the vineyards of Italy
with archbishops from the Vatican City,
now sweats,
calls in sick 
for the first time since genesis,
and becomes agnostic to religion,
pre-destination,
and fate.

The Great Lakes,
once still
and undisturbed,
now ripple
with wrinkled memories.

The moon,
once forgiving,
turns her back to the Earth,
disowning
her only child.