The Artifact by Diana Marie Delgado

I’m approached by two men, one that I hope to sleep with, the other someone that I simply want to be close to. The one that I am hoping for hands me a white pillowcase with something in it, and I immediately understand that it’s a human head – an artifact from Teotihuacan. He asks if I can care for the dead, save it for him until he returns from his travels. That’s when I realize we’ve met before. Centuries ago, I dropped pearl earrings on a cobblestone street, and he was the troubadour who returned them. 

Diana Marie Delgado’s debut poetry collection, Tracing the Horse (BOA Editions, 2019), was a New York Times Noteworthy Pick. A graduate of Columbia University, she is the editor of the poetry anthology, Like a Hammer Across The Page, Poets Writing Against Mass Incarceration, (Haymarket Books, Spring 2024).

6 February 2023