Cristian Ramirez Rodriguez

Rubidium 87

Here at last
is the most indivisible:

A. a population?

B. a voting bloc?

C. one universal wave function
encompassing what was
and forever will be!

All that is real finds form from this deception:

A. Marigolds on the altar
beside the sweetbread?

B. Eternal love
professed by Rocío Dúrcal?

C. The trail beside the road
leading to my current
place of residence
where the power
outage transforms
from little “Apagóncito”
to “El Apagón”!

In the days after the harvest moon
but before the election
vehicles of various fuel efficiencies
slow down beside me.
Some form of atomic cooling
typical of reactive alkali metals
facing the light that travels
at the same speed as the rays
illuminating my face
just enough for the drivers
to see me and scream
about the effects of rain on my back.

cristian ramirez rodriguez

(he/him/él) is a twenty-three-year-old Venezuelan-Canadian poet based in Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada, on the traditional, unceded, and unsurrendered territory of the Wolastoqiyik (Maliseet) peoples. He is the winner of the 2026 Stacy Doris Memorial Award, the Quantum Arts prize in Literature from the Canadian Association of Physicists and the 2025 Spanish language poetry contest from the Oregon Poetry Association. He is currently working on his debut poetry manuscript. Connect with him @pray4cristian on Instagram or via https://linktr.ee/cristianramirezrodriguez.