Valeria's Archive

In 2022 Valeria had this poetry published in Folio literary magazine. She won Second place in Poetry for the poem I am my mother’s daughter which can be found below…

I am my mother’s daughter

but my grandmother sees a mirror

in me and it takes me back to a country

I took for granted as a little girl.

In the Dominican Republic,

rain falls down to mud-up streets,

creating landslides where children play

in their Sunday best.

I never saw the resemblance;

My hair levitated in the sun and

hers wrapped around a pencil with ease;

When jumping off a boat,

100-miles from the shoreline of Puerto Rico,

a ziplock bag of belongings strapped to her chest,

my grandmother prays to God and leaps;

When deciding whether to brush my teeth

in the morning, I feel empty, like the kept

grave of a missing child, and when I call for god,

only the mirror stares back at me.

Bee sting…

On my sisters left arm,

says its my fault,

she’s got a bee sting

on her arm.

Maybe there’s no difference

between the songs left unwritten

and the ones that are forgiven.

Listen

Closely

as they buzz,

hear the worker bees call.

There is a pattern in the accidents

we chose to label mistakes.

There is a bee sting I remember,

From when I was young,

In the sunken in drive way

Where the drain pipes used to stand.

Where my grandpa used to rake the leaves

because he’d never seen an autumn

and did not know the leaves,

and did not know me,

but knew how to treat a bee sting.

There’s less hesitation for men del campo,

My grandpa was a community man,

left no hurt unhealed.

What happens when the bee sting is no longer there

But you can still hear the buzzing?

The time we waste.

You left them out to dry,

The dishes from last night’s dinner,

Said, I’ll put them away in the morning.”

When the morning came you made coffee,

just a little bit of creamer,

and wondered if you should let them enjoy

the sun a little longer.

You don’t remember the last time you

sat in the sun, only that it left

red splotches on your brown face.

Morenita this one is for you

When the days move by too quickly

Like the jutted movements of a tape being rewound.

––

The only thing you want is to be held;

By hands you haven’t seen in a while;

Hands that used to washes dishes with you,

But left soap suds souping in the middle of the bowl;

Hands that held your face so tight every time

They say goodbye;

Hands that have turned gray in

fluorescent lighting and you wonder if he’s cold

in heaven.

And so you let the dishes sit with you in the sun

just a little bit longer.