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​​SOMOS EN ESCRITO
The Latino Literary Online Magazine

POETRY
​POESÍA

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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