Rise and Fall [56] by Daniel Ruiz

Thank you for the interesting afternoon.
It’s not something I’m really familiar with.
If you set the mimesis beam too high
you no longer get to be self-referential,
are no longer let into the secret society
made from all the voices inside your head.

Fortune mistreats those who court it. 
The fatigue of rising he pays for in smoke 
and, now risen, is rained on as punishment.
The hole in the plot I put there on purpose. 
While still inside this book, I outnumber you.
I have “you” surrounded.

Daniel Ruiz is the author of the poetry collection Reality Checkmate (Four Way Books, 2025), which received a Bronze Medal in the 2025 North American Book Awards and was named one of the best debut collections of 2025 by Poets & Writers. He is a Puerto Rican and Cuban poet and translator, a graduate of the Michener Center for Writers and Florida State University, and a two-time finalist for the National Poetry Series. In 2016, he was a Fulbright Scholar to Chile. Currently, he is a PhD candidate in English and Literary Arts at the University of Denver, where he edits poetry and translation for the Denver Quarterly.

1 June 2026