Michael Prado’s (Lima, 1988) Bodhisattva in Downtown Lima traces the empty container of Peru’s mega-city. With lines attentive to enjambed life, Prado’s poetry elucidates the way “the long lines are a fine sand stretched out beyond the bank / each one announcing itself the shadows the silhouettes tell / the time…” Included in this volume is Prado’s Lecture Upon the Acceptance of the Seventh National Prize in Literature, 2023, a keen statement of his poetics and Buddhist thought.

Praise for Bodhisattva in Downtown Lima:

“What happens when nothing happens?” asked Georges Perec as he spent entire days describing an endless array of actions—neither transcendent nor extraordinary—taking place in a Parisian square, trying to exhaust that location through literature. Michael Prado proposes a similar exercise in the heart of Lima; only this time, not the author himself, but the great master of haiku, Matsuo Bashō, takes on the task of compiling this curious poetic inventory. With a dizzying rhythm—befitting a city so exuberant and mestiza—the text unfolds verse by verse into a contemplative mantra, encompassing both action and friction and brimming with a vibrant language that only an Andean adventure could evoke. Far from shunning humor or chaos, this blend of site-specific poetry and Situationist-style drifting—elegantly seasoned with generous amounts of pisco sour and dashes of ayahuasca—does not shy away from the path toward a profound spiritual and aesthetic experience. One should not be surprised if, by the end of the book, one finds oneself overcome by altitude sickness, or soroche. - Carlos Soto Román

“Michael Prado, translated by Judah Rubin, enacts a documentary poetics here, a registering of the quotidian that made me exclaim and laugh out loud with surprise and pleasure as I read: “let’s turn off the light so the roaches / do their work so their antennas / triumph like a taxi driver triumphs / at dawn the electric cables also / moisten…” or “let’s enjoy our hairy coconut knock knock michael prado knock knock knock there’s no one there empty”. I was struck by the deft rendering of larger sets of social relations and smaller particular relationships that are sculpted through the book’s modes of address; the observational and documentary elements twist and wiggle. This is a deeply enjoyable and important book.” - Marie Buck

“The only thing that halts the torrent of Prado’s poem is the appearance of the anus at the end of the book…Uttering what can no longer remain unsaid. The anus as an eruption, as nature opening up its creative potential. Michael Prado lashes out at the mediocre establishment that tries to pretend nothing is as serious as it seems. His prose moves rhythmically, and its violence is a violence that screams without screaming—a violence that never veers off course.” - Diana Moncada

Translated by Judah Rubin

92pp

Publication date: October 2026