Hello friends.
In 2024, I fell in love with the work of Brittany V. Wilder and her obsession with wanting to immortalize every day, the mundane. If you haven't already checked out her work, I highly suggest you do.
I didn't post as much poetry as I would have liked to this year, but that's mostly because I have been saving (as best as I can) my absolute favorites to put into my next poetry collection, which is very much inspired by Wilder's work.
Here's to another year of poetry. Cheers.
-Alexis M. Romo
2024
(Today is) January 7th, 2024
The Orange Peel Test
"Sometimes I think I became the woman I am by accident ..."
Spring Nonet
You Can't Have It All
I don't know how to write poetry anymore, so I guess I'll just be honest
You’re N̶o̶t̶ Latina Enough”
Autumn Nonet
I think the sun should be a metaphor for unrequited love
When life hardens me, I make every effort to become soft again
Forever kissing frogs but none of them ever turning into princes
“You made me trade my v̶i̶o̶l̶e̶t̶s̶ sunflowers for roses”
and it never will be again.
And if a past version of myself
would've heard that statement,
she would have cried
and gone into a panic,
cocooning herself into a ball
until the fright left her body.
She would have spent those precious moments
terrified, realizing (yet again)
that the days are ticking down
and that time is never going to stop.
A past version of myself
would be wondering
why she's so far behind in life
and why she is still not where she wants to be
or even who she wants to be.
But time passes
and that will never change.
(Today is) January 7th, 2024
and it never will be
again.
My ex texted me tonight and all I could think about was whether he'd pass the orange peel test. And in my heart, I already know he wouldn't -- he wouldn't do something as simple as peel an orange for me. And that's okay -- I don't expect him to, nor do I want him to. I am more than capable of peeling my own oranges. But I can't help but wonder if the next man I fall in love with would peel an orange for me:
would he pierce his thumb into the flesh and willingly let his fingers succumb to the inevitable stickiness as he slowly rips the pieces to reveal the fruit? Would he sacrifice his clean hands just to keep mine pretty? Just to keep my nails polished and my (overly) accessorized fingers from getting sticky?
It's a silly criterion to gauge a man's worth, I know that, but every man I see a potential future with, I can't help but ask myself:
would he peel an orange for me?
(After Julia Alvarez)
Maybe I was meant to be prim and proper:
a lady who keeps her head down
and bites her tongue
so as not to cause any trouble.
But I think I became the woman I am by accident:
because if I had never turned to paper,
and learned how to turn my thoughts into poetry,
I would've bit my tongue,
and been a prim and proper lady
and I would've never caused any trouble ...
If it weren't for poetry,
I would've never discovered my voice
and I sure as hell
would've never gained the courage to use it.
Sometimes I think I became the woman I am by accident
and I kept her to myself
until I became brave enough to show the world
that I have always been her.
Underneath the sun, in a garden
brimming with Spring’s beautiful blooms,
I am kissed, blessed, with the sun’s
marmalade rays and the
garden butterfly’s
wings — the promise
of more warm
days to
come.
(After Barbara Ras)
But you can have a gallery wall
filled with art you've collected over the years.
You can have your favorite books
highlighted with the lines you wanted to preserve forever.
You can have journals
filled with your daily musings.
And you can have scrapbooks
of all the people and things that have made you smile.
You can't have it all
but you can have proof of your life,
your existence --
all the bits of you that showed you were here
even though you couldn't have it all.
There is poetry in a routine, but my routine has fallen
into the capitalistic trap:
work, eat, sleep, repeat
work, eat, sleep, repeat
work, eat, sleep, repeat
and work is boring when there's no one to help,
so I stare at the clock between the hours of 9 and 5
and pray 5 o'clock comes soon ...
I've been tracking my calories so I can lose weight
but then I feel guilty because there are people
on the other side of the world who have nothing to eat at all
and I'm stuck in this horrible routine of waking up
around 2 AM each night for no reason at all --
insomnia gnaws at my skull and I don't know
how to make it stop
And the routine repeats ...
where's the poetry in that?
My phone notes used to be filled with poetry,
but now it's filled with the times I left work
so I can account for each minute I was stuck there
and add it to my timesheet at the end of the week.
There are still a few poetic lines buried in there:
"Time used to be measured by the rise and fall of the sun."
— June 12, 2024 at 5:47 AM
and now time is measured by the hours on my paystub
(Hours worked this pay period: 83.26 / Overtime hours: 3.26 / PTO: 0)
"My greatest fear is being forgotten"
— July 9, 2024 at 4:38 PM
because I can't stop thinking about how
a woman's identity disappears
when she becomes a wife and mother
"The world is in shambles, yet I still wanna write about love and beauty and a part of me thinks that's the problem"
— July 16, 2024 at 5:39 AM
but a part of me thinks that the world needs beautiful poetry
more than the memory of a crumbling world
These lines sit in my phone, waiting to be turned into poetry ...
but truthfully,
I'm not sure I really know how to write poetry anymore,
so all I can really do is be honest.
Jenna Ortega doesn’t speak Spanish fluently —
neither do I.
And so we’re stuck in this limbo of trying to understand
if we are Latina enough because we lack a tongue that speaks the language
of our parents, grandparents, and all those who came before us.
We have this ever-present feeling of shame
for not being able to speak the language
that was not only meant to be passed down to us,
but to hold, cherish, and pass it on in the future —
to not let our culture die with us.
But culture by definition encompasses so much more
than just language:
It’s the way we have a giant plastic bag
that stores all our other plastic bags.
It’s the way we reuse butter containers as Tupperware
and the oven for storing our pots and pans.
It’s using a molcajete instead of a food processor
to make guacamole.
It’s warming up a tortilla on the stove
and flipping it with our fingers without burning ourselves.
It’s the way we greet our relatives in Spanish
rather than English.
It’s knowing that one word in Spanish
but never remembering what is in English.
It’s knowing all the words in a Spanish song
but never fully understanding what it means.
It’s looking forward to making tamales every Christmas
and smashing piñatas at birthdays.
It’s admiring artists even more than you already do
because they share your Latinidad.
It’s visiting the country of your people and feeling at home,
no matter how out of place you may feel.
Carolina Reynoso recently told Jenna Ortega that she is Latina enough
and I think we both needed to hear that.
A mosaic of gold, copper, and
burgundy cover the Earth. A
soft yearning for warmth and peace
fills the air. The poets,
the lovers, and the
dreamers honor
Autumn with
grace and
joy.
because no matter how much we may love its rays and its warmth,
especially on our coldest days, it’s truly never within our reach.
It’s not something for us to grab and hold — we can’t have it
all to ourselves without burning up.
And even when we squint our eyes in hopes of seeing it,
we can only feel its heat and can maybe
make out the shape, just enough
to keep us entranced, just enough
to keep us warm, just enough
to keep us wanting more.
Yet, we crave it, embrace it, rely on it,
but we can only admire it from a distance, for the sun
does not care enough about our existence
to become safe — it provides when it wants to but never does much more.
It gives us just enough to survive, but always at the risk
of getting burned. And then it leaves after a while,
fading away into the obscure night.
And though the moon comforts us, it loves us,
the moon could never be the sun.
So we wait and wait for the sun to come back again
to ask it to embrace us, to love us,
but knowing that it will never let you get as close as you want to.
The sun does not care how much you love it:
at the end of the day, it will always leave. It will always disappear
until it wants you to find it again.
I buy myself flowers and cut and snip the stems,
pluck the dying petals, and arrange them
to look as beautiful and as full of life
as possible, as if their days haven't been numbered
since they were picked from the very ground
that birthed them.
I take longer walks to give the sun enough time
to melt the cold off my face. I remind myself to smile
at every beautiful thing that crosses my path: strangers, babies,
the trees, the flowers, the stars. I look at all these things
and wonder how the world can be so beautiful
yet so cruel and unforgiving.
I read poetry and listen to the music and study the paintings
that portray an artist's tales of love and tragedy, immersing
myself in their stories and their hearts. I know they know what
it means for life to harden you, but they still know how to find
the softness, the beauty, and the peace among a world
dying to erase our humanity. They know how to take the pain
and turn it into something worth staying alive for.
When life hardens me, I make every effort
to become soft again, even though
I have to do it over and over again.
Princes only exist within the confines of a fairytale:
between “once upon a time” and “happily ever after”
and maybe because men can only pretend to be the perfect guy
for a short period of time. He can only act for so long
before his lungs give out, before he grows tired
of putting on a face he does not actually possess — he only wears
the mask long enough to lure me in.
Because a man can say he wants a relationship —
he can call me beautiful, he can call me perfect,
he can claim that the universe has destined
for the two of us to be together
and that he feels it in his heart that we are soulmates,
only to realize, days or weeks later,
that he’s disappeared — he’s become a ghost
and I’ll never understand why.
After kissing this many frogs, I should’ve known better
than to kiss another in hopes of turning him into a prince,
because princes only exist in fairytales,
long enough to make me believe in them, but not long enough
for me to believe I’ll actually find one.
You made me trade my sunflowers for roses
and I love roses too but if you really loved me,
you’d know that sunflowers
remind me to always chase the light
no matter how dark it gets.
Sunflowers are joy wrapped in yellow petals
and hold onto that light they spent all day chasing
underneath the seeds, like having pockets
of sunshine to dig into when the sky does go dark.
Sunflowers are like being brave
and they go so high
just so they can embrace the sun,
just so they can get a taste of it — even if it means
they can only have it for a little bit.
Yet, you brought me roses, thinking that it’s universal
symbol for love would make me swoon …
but if you really loved me,
you would bring me the flowers I love
and I love sunflowers best.
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