there’s a song I listen to when I know I’m truly fucked when I know I have feelings for someone when I get that sinking wave of romance in my gut that makes me want to vomit and swim in an ocean of anxiety and like the sentimental poet that I am I won’t tell you what that song is but I’ll give you a hint it’s the cover of a 70’s love song by Will to the Power
my body keeps score even when I think I’m better even though I’ve found closure and made peace with most of my demons my body keeps score on certain dates and remembers unintentional trauma inflicted and the great impact it had on me great emotional earthquakes that shook and broke the core of my soul leading to breakdowns and breakthroughs understanding and accepting who and what’s right for me and what isn’t
always second choice, a lifetime full of heather moments the universe makes a mockery out of me putting me in contests I never win never being smart enough, pretty enough, American enough will I ever be chosen?
ancestor, ancestor- which alcohol goes best with making shitty life decisions ancestors says, not the PBR, not the michelob ultra light, it’s too basic of an energy for the kind of epic shitty life decisions you tend to make don’t reach for the margarita wine either, too obvious, too much of a cliche and you already have plenty of them in your poetry Go for the Guiness six pack make your shitty life decisions with some English class since most of your terrible decisions tend to include some asshole whose ancestors are colonizer Englishmen
once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards desperate for attention, desperate for love desperate to cover myself up with another soul once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards I didn’t have an identity, I didn’t have any self worth I didn’t have any self love Once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards to find validation in my existence to use compliments to feed my ego to lose myself in someone else once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards I was undiagnosed with BPD I was incredibly insecure I was following the script prescribed to me once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards and that was a long time ago and now it’s been 3 years since I’ve been in a relationship almost 2 years in my journey of celibacy and 6 months since I’ve been declared officially single once upon a time I collected lovers like Pokemon cards and now I block anyone who tries to get near me and want to vomit when I interact with my crush
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.
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