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.
Es abril nuevamente y no solo florece la primavera, sino también la creatividad que la acompaña. Y, por supuesto, es el mes nacional de la poesía y todos los años desde 2022 intentó participar en NaPoWrimo, que es una actividad en la que escribo un poema al día y lo publico en mi blog. Estoy emocionado de ver qué poemas locos se me ocurren. El año pasado mi poema favorito fue uno picante que escribí sobre Yung Gravy y que terminé leyendo en frente del público . Además, este año, decidí darles mis propios temas originales para inspirarlos a escribir sus propios poemas. Si quieren pueden enviarme su poema y lo publicaré en mi blog o simplemente pueden guardarlo entre las páginas de su diario. El año pasado tenía como objetivo publicar mis propios mensajes para el Mes Nacional de la Poesía y aquí estamos. Este año decidí usar los títulos de los primeros 30 poemas que he escrito.
cuando tenía 15 años cuando escribí mi primer poema
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.
no me puedo pasar desapercibida en esta mundo privilegiado edad equivocada. apellido equivocado, etnicidad equivocada sintiéndome destinada para fracasar en esta universidad mientras que la presión para triunfar cuelga como una soga sobre mi cuello pero no me doy por vencida y me presento todos los días si solamente para darle una enseñanza a mis hijos a como seguir adelante cuando quieres renunciar
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
clavos sobre el ataúd del futuro que quería ni un príncipe azul ni una casita propia y bonita en vez miró fijamente al cañón de la pobreza tratando de buscar algo brillo de lo que alguna fui entre mis mucho sueños olvidados
any idea or notion of romance is lost to me I’ve tried every which way to make myself appetizing edible for men to take interest in me, love me but the story always turns sour and I’m tired of rejection followed by bouts of tears and insanity this spring I will not spend my energy trying to manifest another fool I’ll get obsessed about or get caught up in my head and daydreams this spring I’m going to concentrate only on my potential that’s yet to bloom Focus of the world of creativity that resides within waiting to get out