Word Meal: Poetry Entrée with a Side of Novella, Get Well Soon!

From being a resident physician during the COVID-19 pandemic to living passionately in travel, romance, and heartache, Rodolfo Villarreal-Calderon is a literary chef to an audience who did not realize their hunger-until served his Word Meal. It is a two-part course: first, 99 poems, and second, an 82-page short story (novella).

The poetry is organized around the three abstractions that connect us all-Love, Time, and Death. Love of lovers, of dogs, and of self; the Death of body, our past, an...