María Esquinca is a poet and journalist. A fronteriza, she was born in Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico and grew up in El Paso, Texas. She is an MFA graduate from the University of Miami. In 2017, she graduated from the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication with a Master of Mass Communication. In 2024 she was the winner of the Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, selected by former U.S. poet laureate Juan Felipe Herrera.
"La Luna"
The moon is tired
of being pretty. Of being
stared at by humans.
How they say wooooow
look at the moon. She’s
the most mad when
scientists say it’s the light
of the sun that makes the
moon shine. She rolls up into
yellow regret. Flips off the
sun. She loves the ugly
in her; body bludgeoned holey
by a million meteors.. But they’ll
never love her that way.. The moon
jumps from the cosmos. She
bunches her body into ghostly
grapes. Trapezoids amoeba.
She is tired of full moons,
eclipses. Fuck that.
She wants to be
something she
never has been. She
splatters into the
earth
falls in crush with an iridescent iguana
that dips his tongue into her wanting
mouth. Kaleidoscope tongue love
and the moon fills up like a bag of popcorn
ready to be eaten.