Originally from Miami, Dana De Greff holds an MFA in fiction from the University of Miami and has been awarded scholarships from: tent, the Tin House Summer Writer’s Workshop, and the Key West Literary Seminar; she is also the Deering Estate’s 2018 Literary Artist in Residence. Her work appears in Philadelphia Stories, PANK, Origins Journal, and The Miami Herald, among others. Currently, she’s at work on her first novel, The Odyssey Hotel, which is set in modern-day Nicaragua and follows two Miami actors filming a biopic on Puerto Rican baseball legend, Roberto Clemente. In her spare time, she teaches creative writing to children and adults and is the Director and Founder of PageSlayers, a nonprofit that provides free creative writing summer camps in Opa-Locka, Florida.

How Many More Days

As in, how many more days can we camp without
getting killed by Alvaro, Alvaro who drinks enough
for three. Alvaro with teeth the color of licorice.

As in, how much longer until Patagonia gets
a chapter of Alcoholics Anonymous or Adulterers
Anonymous, or Andes Anonymous as in, we climb
up and over the Andes in every conversation.

Hard to talk about the weather when pumas fall
from the sky, when condors and armadillos lurk
like innuendos. As in, a single man is more lonely
than a guanaco macho surrounded by ten hembras.

How much further to the end of the story, the one
where la gaucha y el gaucho ride off with a horse,
one of them steering towards the ivory cliffs.

• Purchase Dana’s chapbook here.