For Ekiwah Adler Beléndez, poetry is both light in the dark and nourishment for the soul. Born ten weeks premature in the mountain village of Amatlán, Mexico, and living with cerebral palsy, he first found his voice answering the mountains at age three. His mother scribbled down his words, and by twelve he had astonished Mexico’s literary world with his first collection, Soy (I Am).

Poetry and generosity literally saved his life when a U.S. surgeon, moved by his poems, rallied support for a risky spinal surgery. Today, Ekiwah moves through the world in a wheelchair, but in his poems he walks, dances, even grows “eight legs.” For him, disability is a love story, not a battle. His work—shared in prisons, hospitals, and schools—touches on creativity, inclusion, intimacy, and the mystery at the heart of life.

“To be a poet,” he says, “is like being a tamale vendor, offering flavors of existence—sweet, salty, spicy, and bitter.”