Maya C. Popa

Maya C. Popa (1989-  ) is the author of Wound is the Origin of Wonder. In 2021, she was commissioned by The United Nations to write a poem and deliver the opening remarks for the International Day of the Girl Conference. Her poetry was featured on a Louis Vuitton trunk for the Visionaries 200-Year Anniversary campaign.

Popa is the Poetry Reviews Editor at Publishers Weekly and teaches poetry at NYU.

Not the Wound but What the Wound Implies

Who can say

what the tulips dream

in a hard frost,

the sky as cold

as it is clear

and still unreadable.

Or how pain

decides what stays

in memory, a gift

broken by the time

it reaches us,

silvered, gleaming with age.

— Maya C. Popa