>>Long Distance

ISBN: 978-1-931010-62-7
72 pp. | paper | $10.00

poetry by Steven Cordova

In Long Distance, the fourth title in the Canto Cosas series, Steven Cordova vividly portrays the life of a young, gay, HIV-positive man living in New York. Cordova uses ironic humor to advance AIDS poetry, dissolving the figurative ghetto associated with it and describing a general human condition in which people of many backgrounds come to terms with a wide range of problems, some of them life-threatening.

"Quiet and tender, urgent and knowing, worldly and wise, [Cordova's] poems bear their burdens with grace, never slipping into self-pity or harshness. Shapely and dignified, they maintain their poise and ask us to maintain ours too." -- Rachel Hadas, author of River of Forgetfulness

Steven Cordova penned the chapbook Slow Dissolve (Momotombo Press, 2003). He has published poems in a variety of publications, including Art & Understanding, the James White Review, Evergreen Chronicles, and Borderlands: Texas Poetry Review, and in online journals La Petite Zine, The Cortland Review, and Lodestar Quarterly. His work also appeared in the anthology Ravishing DisUnities: Real Ghazals in English (Wesleyan University Press, 2000). Cordova holds a degree from the University of Texas at Austin and lives and works in New York City.