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​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

We forget what it took to get here

1/2/2022

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​Rinconcito is a special little corner in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

“On The Car Ride Home”
by Diana Aldrete

For my sister Griselda
 
Time is all but an illusion
stuck in theory
relative to Einstein sitting on a train.
 
Our point of departure,
qualified by loss,
always by those we left behind.
The echoes of goodbyes in the rearview mirror
and the reassurances that no matter space or time
love and remembrance would persist.
 
They ripped us from our beds while it was still dark out,
and dumped us into warmed-up car seats,
the moss of furry blankets ready to cradle us back into slumber.
Papi would say it was to beat the morning traffic,
but Mami made sure to bring our focus back,
“sleep,” she would say. 
But as if by the speed of light
we would wake up past state borders:
Wisconsin, Illinois, Missouri, Oklahoma, Texas,
and then into the open arms of Mexico:
Tamaulipas, Nuevo León, Coahuila, Zacatecas, Jalisco.
 
For many months during the year, and for several years,
we shared stories, family anecdotes,
antidotes to scenarios – lessons to learn from the past
inside that car.
We would look out the window,
finding our gaze upon others,
cocooned in their world-on-wheels,
like a rushing herd of buffalos onto the same greener pastures.
Time passed before us like shadows on a screen,
only able to catch on still motions of the mountains,
the canyon drops,
the desert plains, and the flat lands.
The horizon – our point of destination,
but we always arrived at night,
greeted by the smell of manicured grass,
or the occasional wafts of wet earth.
 
At arrival, we fell concave to our loved one’s embrace.
Kitchen tables became radio stations
flash reports of familial current events
announced over cinnamon-spiced coffee,
burnt tortillas, and mangoes.
 
As children, time blossoms slowly
and memory seems vaguely dispersed.
As the only accomplices to each other in the car,
we now draw maps of stories,
connecting coordinates back to an origin
because memory fails us and we forget what it took to get here,
from the dizzying spells of the altitude sickness
to the hugging of curves down valleys of nostalgia.
 
Now with many roads already traveled,
we fall witness to our displacement,
we negotiate mother tongues in static spaces
not sure if home was there or here,
or if time is dilated.
But a search for home, nonetheless,
an oasis in a desert of despair.
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Dr. Diana Aldrete is a bicultural, first-generation Mexican-Salvadoran-American living in Hartford, CT. She is a Visiting Lecturer of Hispanic Studies at Trinity College. She is also an abstract painter, a writer, and a musician. She was born in Milwaukee, WI before moving to Guadalajara Mexico where she did her primary education, and later moved back to the U.S. where she has been ever since. She has published a short fiction in Spanish “Los charales” in Diálogo: an Interdisciplinary Studies Journal, and the academic article “The Ruins of Modernity: Synecdoche of Neoliberal Mexico in Roberto Bolaño’s 2666” in Ecofictions, Ecorealities and Slow Violence in Latin America and the Latinx World, 2019.

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Part jaguar, part thunder and rain

1/28/2021

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​​Husks

Abuelita tells me that I was born in the month of Tlaloc:
Part jaguar, part thunder and rain—grown like corn,
in a smoggy valley downstream from the Iztaccihuatl.
 
There, we knew how to cook for the dead: tamales
sweet as suffering. With molcajetes, we mashed hearts
stuffed with the blood of truths omitted while loving.
 
I don’t remember the bullet that split Julio’s skull. But,
imagine Mother hypervigilant for the sky falling.
Death threats, caseloads of Bacardi, comida cold.
 
Joy coagulates, like cars on the periférico. Finally,
we see corruption’s fangs taller than any volcanos.
Negrita is left at the pound. All night, camote carts cry.
 
Then came the trunks, the take-only-what-you-need, leave
the snow on the Ajusco, take Juanita Perez. Feel the bloody
slice of the interim between indigena and immigrant.
 
Here, my estadounidense classmates pretend I don’t exist.
Abuelita dies. Even Tlaloc forgets me in this blurry desert:
Santa Anas in our eyes, on the stingy side of survival.
 
Somedays, we even let ourselves feel the grinding
of the stone, identity sifting, the flattening of the rolling pin.
Next time, consider keeping all the husks when you peel me.

​Nursemaid Magic

 
Fear runs like a headless chicken
flapping into you at the market,
when you least expect it to— ​
wings tossing up dirt long after the machete
has been wiped clean of blood.
 
The blade is our phone. It swings
at safety every time the calls arrive:
“Los vamos a fusilar!” 
 
Meanwhile, Mami draws lines in the rugs
pacing—she squawks, her feathers awry.
 
Some will grab the rosary, others the gun.
There is no time to wait for pricy milagros
in the Plaza de la Conchita.
 
But I was with Juanita making maza and, I swear,
she left the virgencita on her gold throne,
and summoned the pumas, monkeys and nāhuallis
down from her verdant Oaxacan hills instead,
right into our kitchen in the big city.
She wove protective spells into my black braids,
combed out my anxiety with her whispery Náhuatl,
took me straight to the moon of her smiling face.
 
Some will burn copal, others learn about battle
from the zing-zing of hummingbirds.
 
It’s no wonder Mami, to this day,
though safely tucked into a California suburb,
refuses to answer her phone:
She didn’t have a nursemaid
like my Juanita. 

​The Body Remembers

 
My Abuelita nearly died in the fire
that ate her songbirds,
 
in the city Dad came from--
where he played the violin.
 
Maybe it was cigarettes,
maybe spontaneous combustion.
 
We don’t talk about those things
that happened in Juarez,
 
where youth was bought and sold,
like trinkets at the border.
 
But ask my mother and she’ll tell you
how Alzheimer’s brought it all back.
 
How the body resurrects wounds
before it dies: harkens back to terror
 
through touch. After the brain falters,
after fighting, escaping, crossing,
 
sweating, surviving. You still die
under a conquistador’s swinging sword.
 
I prefer fire.
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​Katarina Xóchitl Vargas was raised in Mexico City. She and her family moved to San Diego when she was 13, where she began composing poems to process alienation. A dual citizen of the United States and Mexico, today she lives on the east coast where—prompted by her father’s death—she’s begun to write poetry again and is working on her first chapbook. Somos en escrito is delighted to  be the first to publish her writings.

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Erasure and a Rift

4/10/2020

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Two poems by Karen Gonzalez-Videla

​Erasure of a Teenage Daughter’s Letter to Her Deported Mother
 
Mom,
 
It’s been a long time since                                          .
I           think                      how long                          
      photo album we made                             that summer.
Do you                  the copy I gave you?
Or did they take it              too? I still have mine.
some of                       are torn --
I couldn’t stop             shaking hands from   
the afternoon you left.
 
One photo                   is whole —                  we hold hands
at the peak of that North Carolina mountain, out of breath
and trembling;                   wind shoves our clothes against skin, but
we ground our feet on                         soil beneath us and
refuse to fall.  I wonder if we could have                           .
 
Maybe you wouldn’t                           other side
of a man-made border. Maybe I wouldn’t                     vomit
questions on                crumpled paper:
Did the air           different when you crossed               ?
Did you feel      future                        ,                                   ,
and                                  slip out of your hands?
Did you even notice                your foot crossed south? 
Are you                       less          an outsider back there?
Or                    still a traitor that tried              
and failed? 
 
Love,
Rift of Red and Rojo
 
I’m stuck in a rift between
two stars. One red,
the other rojo. They blind
me. I need to close my eyes.
Won’t they dim a little?
Share light?
 
This reversed vacuum
spits out held-in polvo. My light dims,
there’s too much dust.
The stars shine brighter now.
Dos tres cinco siete.
Brighter still.
 
I was red for
three six seven years but
my star grew caliente,
switched to rojo but
my tongue tripped at the
rrrrrrrrrrrrrrr. Forgive me, for
“rat” and “rata” sound
so similar.
 
One of you should come get me,
claim me, take me.
I swear I’m a star.  
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Karen Gonzalez-Videla is an undergraduate student at the University of South Florida. She is currently pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Psychology and Creative Writing, and she loves combining these two passions in her fiction. Although she writes about a variety of subjects, she focuses mostly on the immigrant experience and the exploration of one’s womanhood. She has upcoming work at Sidereal Magazine, Ghost Parachute, and Vita Brevis Press. 

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"...being an immigrant’s daughter"

3/15/2020

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Political cartoon from the Chicago Tribune from 1914, Wikipedia.


​​Two poems from the colonies

By María Lysandra Hernández

oppression: how disney channel
is the best form of neocolonialism

in my high school, we rose in an ocean of plaid skirts and blue vests and placed our palms
over our hearts and tried to stand still, despite the itch of our noses and the passing of notes,
to listen to our anthems before assemblies, meetings, and model UN competitions;

my World History professor told us once before assembly to note the differences between
anthems,
and their hidden words between high notes we made fun once we paraded out the auditorium; I
too,

know the rockets had a red glare–yet my singer’s voice, inherited from my mariachi father, sings
it best; whereas my father’s anthem reveres Mexican cannon’s booms, and the US’s prides
“unlikely” war triumphs, my mother’s La Borinqueña praises the beauty uncovered–like a
bride’s once

unveiled–when finally dis-covered by conquistadors who had never seen such splendor, nor such
beaches, where they could settle and disseminate onto fertile land the will and command of the

Catholic queen; it starts off small, you see, taking symbols (like our uniforms) and calling it
mundane to not stand out but conform among the sea of historical anthems that inflate chests
with pride; and we’re taught how it’s a privilege to sing our anthem now since we couldn’t
before due to

laws like la Ley de Mordaza, law 53 of 1948, that gagged and killed those who carried our azul
celeste flags, those who sang our real anthem and songs, and those who even thought of
breathing

independent air, so now we should be grateful to be able to remember Columbus only wanted
our land for its beauty, be grateful that el Grito de Lares was unsuccessful in reaching
independence, be grateful we sing the United States’ anthem and we can sing the Hannah
Montana theme song

in perfect English and recognize Mickey Mouse before knowing the revolutionary anthem by
Lola Rodríguez de Tió and recognizing our own fallen leaders, we should be grateful that we
receive

American media content across the ocean, too, despite being disenfranchised from voting for the
next CEO of this American franchise, we should be grateful for the orange pedophillic hands that

handed us over paper towels to mop up rivers in our houses, we should be grateful, we should be
grateful, we should be grateful, we should be grateful, we should be grateful, we should be
grateful

the abc’s of being an immigrant’s daughter

agua de jamaica paints my lips and mouth
blood-red, like i’m dead. i find nostalgic
comfort in the broken plastic cup that is
dribbling, dripping down its berry-flavored
esperanza. recall the square i circled around as a
fumbling child? silly child, mumbling the longgone name for a patriarchal figure–broken masthead of family. we were decapitated after the
infernal heat of the immeasurable trek that
jostles spirits. odyssey on desert–not sea–seeking for any
kind hands to feed, caress. yet, only orange ones that
like to poison wells, appear with their ‘oh, wells,’
‘maybe later,’ and ‘bad hombres’ rhetoric. they
never try the exercise of recognizing countries that lie on
opposing continents. why would the people’s president
partake in any education other than indoctrination? why
question the binary of them vs. us? white vs. brown?
really, children of all ages, of all different faces,
seem to have fun: no parents allowed, sleeping in
tenebrous cages, tossing and turning over the hope of the
un-american dream. the eagle saves from villainous
vipers in deserts that slither across illegally
with evil intentions; yet no one mentions the
xoloitzcuintlis’ trips to chaperone the children who
yearned for golden gates, a familiar embrace–
zócalos are now too far to feel like home.

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​María Lysandra Hernández is a BA Writing, Literature and Publishing student with a minor in Global and Post-colonial Studies at Emerson College. She is currently the Head of Writing at Raíz Magazine, Emerson College’s bilingual and Latinx publication. For more poetry, you can find her on instagram at @marialysandrahern.
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"My backyard is a fence..."

2/12/2018

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​Rinconcito
is a special “little corner” in Somos en escrito for short writings: a single poem, a short story, a memoir, flash fiction, and the like.

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The Fence  ​​

By Bianca Paz

In my backyard is a fence,
It divides mothers from children,
It divides the collective art form of society,
It divides Mexico from US,
It divides.

“They take away our jobs,” they say
But when they are asked to clean the school hallways,
“It is someone else’s job for lower pay.”

Land of the free
But in order to flee,
Take a number please,
You are number one million, two hundred and six thousand, five hundred three.

You wait for years, but are still denied
They don’t understand you just need a place to hide, but
Unfortunately you have a cousin on red, white, and green’s lower south side.

All you want is a better,
Life
Without guns yelling outside your front door,
Without murders and neighbors being turned into whores,
Without the constant suffocation of this drug war.

In my backyard is a fence,
It divides mothers from children,
It divides the collective art form of society,
It divides Mexico from US,
It divides.
Life from death.

But they will not let you cross to,
Live. ​
​
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​Bianca Paz, who grew up in Brownsville, Texas, is enrolled at Concordia University, Austin, Texas, toward a major in communications and a minor in writing, which includes both non-fiction and fiction stories and poems. She is Editor-in-Chief of the school’s student magazine, “The Spin.”

El Rinconcito, the little corner, is a special niche in Somos en escrito for short literary works: single poems, essays, short stories, flash fiction, young writers, and the like. Submit manuscripts to somossubmissions@gmail.com. ​

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