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.
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.
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