Frontextos:
How do I write about an emotion when the words/letters I know fail to evoke it? I turn to asemic writing.
In conversation, Octavio Quintanilla
However, in my case, I also use concrete images, figures, so in a way I am mixing the pure asemic with the figurative.
Inri 
Máscara 
Obedecen 
Paisaje 
Reino sin puertas
In this series from top left to bottom right, Inri, Máscara, Obedecen, Paisaje, Reino sin puertas; click on thumbnail image to reveal entire image.
Octavio Quintanilla is the 2018-2020 Poet Laureate of San Antonio, Texas, and the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). His poetry, fiction, translations, and photography have been widely published in such notable journals as Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. His Frontextos (visual poems) have been featured in Poetry Northwest, Gold Wake Live, Newfound, Chachalaca Review, The American Journal of Poetry, The Windward Review, Tapestry, Twisted Vine Literary Arts Journal, and The Langdon Review of the Arts in Texas, among other outlets. Quintanilla’s visual work has been exhibited in notable museums and art spaces all across Texas, most recently at the Southwest School of Art in San Antonio. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of North Texas and is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and poetry editor for The Journal of Latina Critical Feminism and Voices de la Luna: A Quarterly Literature & Arts Magazine. Quintanilla teaches literature and creative writing in the MA/MFA program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Read more at octavioquintanilla.com.