The Brillantina Project are poems for those who glitter and glisten, those with bright wondrous gazes, hearts bursting with love. Somos brillo que brilla: Somos Orlando. Let us unite in solidarity through poetry and use our words to create awareness and change. Here is my contribution.
Read more "A Fire that Started From Nothing"Nepantla: A Journal Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color is an intentional community space. Our mission is to nurture, celebrate, and preserve diversity within the queer poetry community. Through this journal, we are attempting to center the lives and experiences of QPOC in contemporary America. Thus, we view the journal (and our reading series) as […]
Read more "NEPANTLA!"Two Old Ladies at the Met Staring at a Mural After Romare Bearden’s The Block (1971), October 29, 2011 This is art? You don’t think so? I’m asking you. This is what the Met calls art. Is it a painting? I think it’s a collage. Magazine clippings and— The building dressed as neon paint&lights. […]
Read more "Two Old Ladies at the Met Staring at a Mural"Canela and Cream* Her fingerprints left cinnamon on everything she touched especially in the morning. The cabinets, their door pulls the faucet, the counter, the white face of the boy on the box of Farina. On his cardboard pedestal, his porcelain and rose covered in cinnamon mocked me. He looked like a pastry of a […]
Read more "Canela and Cream"The Birth of Amar The Moon walked along the coast in the same white lace her mother wore the night she was born. While the tide was still low, the Moon lay down, bruising the wet sand beneath her. As her pulse quickened, so did the tide. The foam billowed about ankles. Her toes dug […]
Read more "The Birth of Amar"What would happen if, as we walked along the shore rocks, I just fell in? What if by fell I mean jumped? Would you follow me down the rabbit hole or ask for help? And when you asked for help (which I am sure you would) would you stand there watching me become bubbles until someone walked by […]
Read more "falling out of"The Block It’s not true that you can’t see stars out here. The block is a stage where we put on plays starring triple threats everyday. Multiple job-having, child-raising, lovemaking barely old enough to see-n-say. Even though bedtime has been dreaming for hours, little boys and girls tap dance profanity, pampers and paraphernalia in the […]
Read more "The Block"Breathalyzer (from Hypothetical Review, Issue 2) Today, I will find mom in her rose garden. Pretending to be two smashed strawberries hiding behind a not-so-white picket fence, I will lie next to her. Underneath our orange blossom sky, her face is soft and red. Her hair is hay or dead grass. Golden straw, newly spun. Keys glitter […]
Read more "Breathalyzer"¡Canta Coqui, Canta! [from Hypothetical Review, Issue 2] On a bed made of too many pillows Mi Abuelita sits up and nibbles into English. Stories of Arecibo without street lamps, without time, without roofs and first kisses on montañas alta spin as a documentary on tree frogs glows at the foot of the bed, a bowl of […]
Read more "¡Canta Coqui, Canta!"Portrait of Abuela as a Child on Laundry Day [from Hypothetical Review, Issue 2] Panchita fashions phantom dances out of linen stolen from neighbors’ lines that hammock rainforest sky the tear down and snap of alligator clothespins bite marrow sticky splinters rope and tastes like percussion pushed up against a river stone washboard Panchita presses perfume out […]
Read more "Portrait of Abuela as a Child on Laundry Day"
Roberto F. Santiago 