out of this soil, a knife by Miguel Santiago Flores

Limited edition print copy from the 2026 Garden Party Chapbook Contest!
Shipping in Fall 2026!
cover art: son of the land by Esraa Elbanna

filipino-american miguel santiago flores was the winner of the Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry's contest with their novel, The Hungry Ghosts. they were also a semi-finalist in Button Poetry's 2023 Chapbook Contest, featured in Midnight Garden Publishing, and a contributing author to Lost to the Canon.

Praise for out of this soil, a knife:

“O, son of man. O, son of man. Who is the angel in revelations with a foot on water and a foot on land?” – Chance The Rapper, “How Great”
Miguel Flores’ “out of this soil, a knife” is the book that I have been ravenous for. Desperate and starving for more than I could provide for myself, I have opened many a collection, splayed many a spine to discover “an idea becoming a people becoming a person again.” Miguel is a spelunker of his own liberated soul – a soul who is and is walking the journey home. Crafted by a meticulous care and mastery that emanates from the page while exploring different forms and cultural influences, Miguel depicts the journey of the exile moved by the urge and impetus for liberation. I hear Maya Angelou whispering somewhere in the rafters “Belonging now/here, I belong everywhere.” Though Miguel asserts in “whatumeantheybuiltaparkinglotoverthebodies? pt. 1” that “I can not always paint hope over a sunset.” That is in fact what I am currently feeling after having been protected, held, covered, agitated, enlightened, and met in Miguel’s work. The spirit woven in this work is that of a tender, diligent gardener, indeed. A righteously angry and knowingly faithful one, at that! Alhamdullilah!
This collection is nothing short of a spiritual guide for the modern day revolutionary. Because “how can you spit fire if you do not first fill your stomach with kindling?” This book is kindling, indeed. Catalyst, certainly. Sustainer, thankfully. In the dark, enlightened times we find ourselves in (think: blacklight, if you will), the potency of Miguel’s work grants the reader permission to shed every layer of caked-mud-turned-to-skin that has been slung upon them as a fake identity by a fake, idolatrous, and empty society – and sit in the rawness of their dry season, the season of their unbecoming and unfurling, and rename for THEMSELVES all that emerges in the field, in the garden, of the essence of their existence. 
“ – and you/ tell me I shouldn’t celebrate something so/ gotdamn beautiful”? A celebration is definitely called for in honor of this new, earthy, and ancient breath that I am now breathing thanks to Miguel Flores’ “out of this soil, a knife”.
Thank you, Miguel, for the full belly.
In love and solidarity, 

–Melissa Ferrer Civil, First Poet Laureate of Kansas City, MO

A New American voice in poetry is emerging. In Miguel Santiago Flores’s out of this soil, a knife, the point of incision is where the healing will eventually begin, but first we must address the wounds sustained collectively as moral injury. These poems warn us that “Even our self-therapy/ is proxy.” —that “Perhaps some things are not meant/ to be metamorphed/ into obscurity.”
Miguel’s use of form and language cuts through our united state of apathy with the autopsical precision of an examiner after a crime. On one hand, there is a vigil; on the other, a call for judgment and justice. In these poems, the body is a revolution unto itself: “Turning towards itself to be free.” Reclaiming the immigrant body as more than a creative body of work but an agent of change. Informing us: “When I tell you that liberation begins in the body what I mean is,…”
 
–Huascar Medina, 2019-2022 Poet Laureate Emeritus of Kansas, author of “Protest as Love Poem” and “Un Mango Grows in Kansas”.

Examining the entangled roots of revolution and the body, out of this soil, a knife is an origin story, a sermon for abolition, a block party. miguel santiago flores weaves musical apocaloptimism that does not just imagine liberation, but gets in the dirt and returns to the soil something beautiful and life-giving.

-Alessandra Nysether-Santos, GPC 2026 Judge