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Bearing Witness, No Frills, A Day That Holds, In Exile, Looking Up, and More.
The witness issue / March 21, 2026
Welcome to The Witness Issue, where today’s poem, Sighs of the Salvadoran Coffee Farmer, stands in the fields and refuses to look away. I first wrote this piece in 2018 as a triptych, three connected panels that move from land, to place, to people, each holding its own view while building a larger whole. It has stayed with me ever since. It is one I return to, as if it is never quite finished. There is something in it that continues to press and asks to be seen more clearly each time. The poem traces the path from crop to cup while holding steady on the hands that make it possible. Rather than soften things, it observes and it names the distance between those who harvest and those who consume. In many ways, returning to it has become part of the work itself.
This issue stays with the idea of witness and carries it beyond the poem and into how poetry has long served as a record of what is seen and remembered. Further in, you will find a short look at the craft behind this approach, a brief reflection tied to World Poetry Day, and a return to Pablo Neruda, whose work reminds us that even in isolation, a poet can still see clearly.
Keep seeing what others pass by.
Jason
jasonzguest.com
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Featured Poem
Devices
Echoes
Testaments
Creative Spotlight
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Featured Poem
Sighs of the Salvadoran Coffee Farmer
Sighs of the Salvadoran Coffee Farmer
by Jason Z Guest
La Madre
Wind churns the understory as
trash tumbles across the birthplace
of coffee beans.
It's a space where torn hands of mothers
tend their newborn,
whose eyes trace clouds like figurines.
The day turns deeper shades of blue
as brows furrow working the spade,
and hands quicken like machines.
Without end they unfold,
the red cherry their gold,
work only forgiven by Mother.
Caldera
“Glory to God!” they cry
upon volcanic slopes
picking beans for flavor.
Backs bend under harvest,
deep breaths, then baskets heaved,
a breeze drifts in for their savor.
Faithful Lago de Coatepeque,
grand disc of azul; catchment garnished in growth,
sleeping caldron of the divine Savior:
Why offer bounty and vista,
when from crop to barista,
one shall never meet the other?
Campesinos
Feet harden under heavy loads,
daily climbs through diesel fumes,
Their whistles easing miseries.
These producers, burdened,
these providers, hand upon head,
my, oh my, how they toil in ecstasy.
Proud harvesters stand with machete
as appendage, binder, and reminder,
that as others they shall never be.
My friend, yes, they ache,
they give, and they take,
all for another.
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Today's issue sponsored by
Texas Hill Country Provisions: Thoughtfully-Designed Texas Gear.
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The idea for "THC Provisions" emerged around a campfire in early 2020, in the heart of the Texas Hill Country. Inspired by conversations about life, creativity, and a connection to something greater than ourselves, we began designing Texas-inspired artwork and dreaming up a vision for a different kind of company.
We make high quality hats and apparel inspired by Texas, and designed here in the Texas Hill Country. Every product we make is a labor of love, and we hope you love them too.
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Devices
Parataxis
Parataxis is a rhetorical device that places one thing beside another without explanation. In this case, clauses or phrases are laid out without much connecting them, and in a way, isn’t that how a witness speaks? They don't interpret the moment or soften it. He or she tells what happened, and then what happened next. “A gate, a truck, a man standing there.” There is little or no commentary, just a sequence of thoughts or observations. |
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In poetry, parataxis works the same way. One line follows another, each carrying its own weight and forcing the reader to connect it. Because nothing is explained, the reader must stand in the scene and feel it. Parataxis respects these kinds of moments and does not dress them up.
“Live and invent. I have tried. I must have tried. Invent. It is not the word. Neither is it live. No matter. I have tried.” — Samuel Beckett, The Unnamable (Paris: Les Éditions de Minuit, 1953; English trans., Grove Press, 1958)
Here, witness does not always mean seeing something in the world. Sometimes it means refusing to look away from what is happening inside of you. Beckett’s use of parataxis reflects that for the reader. Each sentence stands as a record of a passing thought and in total it becomes the truth.
Learn more about the Irish playwright and poet at The Poetry Foundation.
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Echoes
World Poetry Day
On this day in 1999, UNESCO declared March 21 as World Poetry Day, a recognition that poetry endures because someone is willing to see, and then say what was seen. Since ancient Mesopotamia, poetry has been standing in the moment and carrying the work forward across languages and borders, and the role to witness has remained the same. |
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The push for a World Poetry Day came from within UNESCO’s cultural division, shaped by member states with deep literary traditions that saw poetry not as decoration, but as something foundational. They chose this date deliberately, as the spring equinox in the Northern Hemisphere signals renewal, transition, and light returning. I love this metaphor for poetry itself, reaffirming it as a serious cultural force and not something just academic or nostalgic.
On a day marked for poetry around the world, the reminder is simple. We do not just write to imagine. We write to remember what we have seen. May this day protect poetry as a way of seeing and recording the world, which is exactly what your Witness Issue does today.
Learn more about celebrating one of humanity’s most treasured forms of cultural and linguistic expression and identity, from the UNESCO site:
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Testaments
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda is certainly remembered for love his poems (Twenty Love Poems and a Song of Despair), but that is only part of his story. In 1948, after speaking out against the Chilean government, the Nobel Laureate was forced into hiding and eventually fled his country. Before that escape, he spent time isolated along the Chilean coast, cut off and under pressure. That stretch of life changed the way he wrote. |
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From that point on, Neruda became a poet of witness. He wrote about injustice, labor, and the weight of political power on ordinary people. His long work Canto General does not look away from history, but names it and carries it forward. Even in isolation, he stayed connected to what was happening beyond him.
This is a turn worth noting, and I think about it often. Neruda proved that witness does not require a crowd. A man in exile, alone on a coastline, can still see clearly and speak to what is happening in his country. When he does, the poem becomes more than feeling; it becomes record.
Enjoy this full biography video on the life of Neruda here.
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Creative Spotlight
Starfront Observatories
Out in the Texas dark, where the sky is still allowed to be honest, Starfront Observatories does its work. Telescopes sit far from city light, under Bortle 1 skies, watching what most of us no longer see. From anywhere, someone can log in and look up, removing distance, noise, and excuses.
Here the phrase quietly suggests that dreams stand against emptiness. Dreaming becomes a way people imagine possibility where there might otherwise be none.
For The Witness Issue, that matters. Starfront is not about spectacle. It is about attention. It holds the night steady and lets the record form. No commentary, no softening. Just light that left long ago, arriving now, asking to be seen clearly.
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