University of Denver Autumn 2025

ARTS & CULTURE

PhD Poets on the Page DU doctoral students Daniel Eduardo Ruiz and Mary Helen Callier share excerpts from their breakthrough poetry collections.

Some Verses There’s the universe, the multiverse, and the philosophers they try to hide from; the zigzags of grandparents’ marriages, mirages of grandfather clocks; then there’s the rising stock, the livestock, the market both super and not. An old couple lifts a watermelon then drops it in their shopping cart. When later they take turns holding and slicing it, before turning on the TV, the perfection of their form brings the questioning of forms into question,

reversing our launch instead toward those midnight lights in the marketplace where people who have nowhere to go can safely bite the loudest apples.

Nitpicking the Gods After hours in the kitchen,

the unclean oil begs to be scraped off the pan. The crash-test dummy

flung from a model car’s windshield can’t stop laughing just because. Because is the question the gods never loved. Because, like the engine in the chest of a dove, the river runs counter to the plans of the sun. One cloud cuts off another. Hence, squalor. Rain, sun, thunder just because.

Daniel Eduardo Ruiz is a PhD student in English & Literary Arts. A Puerto Rican and Cuban poet and translator, Ruiz published his debut collection, “Reality Checkmate,” with Four Way Books. Follow him on X or Instagram at @danielruizpoet .

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UNIVERSITY OF DENVER MAGAZINE | AUTUMN 2025