John Manuel Arias is a queer, Costa Rican-American poet and writer. He is a Canto Mundo fellow & alumnus of the Tin House Summer Writers Workshop. His prose and poetry have been published in PANK, The Rumpus, F(r)iction, Joyland Magazine, and Akashic Books. He has lived in Washington D.C., Brooklyn New York, and in San José, Costa Rica with his grandmother and four ghosts. His debut novel, Where There Was Fire, will be published by Flatiron Books in September 2023.

POETRY

Juana Attempts an Abecedarian

By JOHN MANUEL ARIAS

Nine nuns had the nerve to die in a bus crash in Costa Rica. No one knows their names.