when the doors open, I can’t see the path

an excerpt from Alan Pelaez Lopez’s new collection Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien

Welcome to [RE:CON]CRETIONS! A new series of excerpts from our forthcoming and recent publications.

Today, OS collaborator Alan Pelaez Lopez shares an excerpt from their new book, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien, available now from The Operating System. Want more? Check out our interview with Alan about their work.

[Image: The cover of Alan Pelaez Lopez’s talks new collection Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien, available now from The Operating System, composed of a three cut-out and incomplete human figures against a green and black background. Cover design by Elæ Moss.]

About the Author

[Image: Photo of Alan Pelaez Lopez seated by a window next to a plant.]

Alan Pelaez Lopez is an AfroIndigenous poet, installation, and adornment artist from Oaxaca, México. They are the author of the art and poetry collection, Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien (The Operating System, 2020), and the chapbook, to love and mourn in the age of displacement (Nomadic Press, 2020). Their poetry has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and “Best of the Net,” as well as published in Best New Poets, Best American Experimental Writing, POETRY, Puerto Del Sol, Everyday Feminism, & elsewhere. Pelaez Lopez has received fellowships and/or residencies from Submittable, the Museum of the African Diaspora, VONA/Voices, and UC Berkeley. They live in Oakland, CA & the internet (as @MigrantScribble).