sultry July night at a pirate party fiery red Dionysian hair, body made by Gods caught his eye from a distance he wanted her, he craved her, he wanted to fuck her he approached her right away she saw through his toxic fuck boi vibe Said “no thanks” and introduced him to me I was already 3 drinks in, mesmerized by his body Covered in tattoos from head to toe, his boyish smile felt an electric energy between us (or maybe that was the buzz from my third margarita) he’s the sexiest man I’ve ever seen, I WANT THIS BAD BOY! within a few minutes, we assessed each other and flirted he asked me for my phone number, giddy, I gave it to him and that was the beginning of the end of me and almost 6 years later, my friend still says, “Sorry, I introduced you to him”
entre la selva y la ciudad caigo en un purgatorio de identidad Caigo entre salvage y intellectual entre la selva y la ciudad caigo en dos mundos opuestos que alumbran la magia de mi dualidad
ramen 3 times a day in the dingy 2 bedroom duplex and it was an upgrade from the miniature apartment in mid city L.A the one where there was a bullet hole in my window so what if the stripper and the landlord’s son got in screaming matches so what if the marine next to us beat his wife weekly for her infidelity despite the poverty experienced, despite the trashy and toxic domestic energy that dingy duplex was freedom to me and my family it was hope and salvation from the nightmare of indentured servitude L.A had been
thousands of indigenous children never made, never born Fujimori’s presumptuous superiority and cruel policies caused this inhumanity, this crime against the most marginalized the poorest robbing thousands of women of their right to procreate a shameful part of Peru’s history thousands of indigenous children mourned who were never planted, never had a chance to bloom perhaps their existence was a threat to those in power full of corruption, now we’re never know
mami dressed me up in ruffles and pastels whenever she could I’d swirled and twirled in my dress until I got dizzy loved when everyone told me, “ay que bonita te miras” and I awkwardly bowed, smiled, and hid sashayed to every single one of my relatives and did the same thing it’s one of the few times I remembered being vain as a child one of the few times I didn’t feel weird and like an outcast external validation learned at the tender age of 8
It’s April again and it’s not only spring that is in bloom but also the creativity that goes along with it. And of course, it’s national Poetry month and every year since 2022 I try to participate in NaPoWrimo which is an activity where I write a poem a day and post it on my blog. I use prompts from this website for inspiration: https://www.napowrimo.net/ and as always I’m excited to see what crazy poems I come up with. Last year my favorite poem was a spicy one I wrote about Yung Gravy that I ended up performing at open mic.
my forever muse
Also, this year, I decided to give y’all my own original prompts to inspire y’all. Feel free to send me your poem and I’ll post it on my blog or you can just keep it in between the pages of your journal. I had a goal last year that I would post my own prompts for National Poetry Month and here we are. So here are prompts that I wrote sometime in early 2022. Here’s my contact info where you can email me or dm me your poem.
I’m always finding ways to challenge myself. Best of luck to me!
so it’s been a while since I wrote a blog post but as I’m planning on continuing to tell my story through poetry from 2007 and forward, I wanted to be honest with anyone who has been following my story. so as some of y’all have noticed, I’ve been telling my story by posting poems I wrote from 1996 and on. I have translated all of those poems. As some of y’all have also noticed, I’ve also started heavily revising those poems or writing new poems inspired by those poems and posting them but always providing a link to the original. It seemed like a messy thing to do at the time but I did this to challenge myself and to grow as a writer. Having said all that, between the years of 2007 and 2018, I hardly wrote any poems, so I don’t have a lot of poems to pull from to continue to tell this story the way I want to tell it. I did however write a lot of opening lines for poems or just random quotes between this time. I figure that I could still tell my story through poetry by using those opening lines or quotes as prompts for new poems. I’m not sure if this is foolish or crazy or both but for me it’s important to continue to tell my story through poetry and it feels like this is the way to go. And of course, I’m going to translate all of those poems into Spanish. If you’ve made it this far, thank you for being here. This is more or less a brain dump and a way for me to be honest about my process for how I’m going to proceed in telling my story. I also wanted to add that I’ll restart telling the story in May to give me a bit of time to write those poems and revise them. We’ll see what happens.
la ira y furia de mis antepasados femeninas viven en mi ellas me visitan en sueños y me mandan mensajes que cuentan sus historias, sus verdades aunque duelan, aunque algunas me llamaran sádica y dramática ellas me inquietan y me dicen es tiempo de gritar todas las injusticias y trastornos vividow que nuestras muertes no han sido en vano y aunque lloro y trato de ignorar la llamada de la sangre es inevitable-fui escogida- para sus venganzas, para sus historias de redención
can’t blend in with this privileged world wrong age, wrong last name, wrong ethnicity I stand destined for failure on this institutions steps as the pressure to succeeds hang around me like a noose around my neck and yet I still keep going and show up every day if only to teach my kids a lesson in how to keep going when you want to quit
for almost three years I’ve been waiting for the next guy to appear as some kind of hero, as some kind of reward for all of my effort I’ve put into myself and the life I’ve built Subconsciously I did this Even as I publicly roared about being empowered on my own I still wanted someone to be my sanctuary to lay my love in And I wrote, manifested, schemed, flirted got obsessed with men were just meant to be friends Thinking, gosh, if I hang on long enough, he’ll come around this might work out but today I discovered the only hero for me is the woman in the mirror who still manages to get out of bed even on the bad days when she’s too tired to function when she’s exhausted by all of it