The Exchange is the Weekly’s poetry corner, where a poem or piece of writing is presented with a prompt. Readers are welcome to respond to the prompt with original poems, and pieces may be featured in the next issue of the Weekly.
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Un alma cotorra by Diana Hernandez Gomez
my mom says i must have eaten the cotorro seeds
cuz my words started flowing and never seemed to stop
Sometimes i think she wants to be able to tell me to shut up
i believe in words
i believe in sleepy I love you’s
i believe in honesty
the spiky kind those that leave splinter
espinas que no matan pero bien que chingan
i believe my dad when he calls the produce worker primo and the man at the carnival and then when he does it again to every Mexican man we meet
i believe in blood
those potions that move nations
i believe in nomads
the kind who’s heart isn’t attached to no land
the kind that fits into the gap of a healed fracture
i believe that chinéese food is only good the morning after
i believe people when they say they care
i believe in fear and those things that should scare
i believe in eczema skin and the aquaphor at the bottom of my bag
i believe in peeling scabs and ripping off bandages
i believe in questions and the need to know
i believe in the tangled up hair in the back of my neck the type that breaks chains i believe that I’m progress
in some type of process to fix patterns I didn’t even break.
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Prompt:
“What mistakes do you think are needed in your teenage years or twenties? What beauty is there in being young and dumb?”
This could be a poem, journal entry, or a stream-of-consciousness piece. Submissions could be new or formerly written pieces.
Submissions can be sent to bit.ly/ssw-exchange or via email to chima.ikoro@southsideweekly.com
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I believe in Diana Gomez!
Beautiful poem. Thank you.