Here is where my sentences are choppy. My thoughts may be incomplete. Here is where I tap into disparate and desperate images and ideas that serve as kindling in what becomes the fire in a poem.
Follow me. Come see what I find.

Here is where my sentences are choppy. My thoughts may be incomplete. Here is where I tap into disparate and desperate images and ideas that serve as kindling in what becomes the fire in a poem.
Follow me. Come see what I find.
Increasingly, as I’ve taught workshops I have crafted takeaway documents for further study. Very recently, I’ve returned to drawing or painting or playing with clay. It soothes my hands after a lot of 15 page papers for school. But it also refreshes my mind. So, as a new feature for my website, I’ll occasionally offer printables for those who visit. I may place them all on one page at some point but for now they will show on this blog page.
The first printable is an origami fortune teller that is also a visual poem. Dependent on the section you choose you will help me in crafting a poem. Click on the image below to open the pdf.
Possible poems include:
we tumble / like stones / across the land / across the water
we search / like ants / circling / foraging
Future printables will include quick writing prompts or tricks to get into writing, or guides to help develop characters or scenes.
Let me know how you like these!
Join some incredible poets Thursday, April 21. I’ll be joining masterful poet and translator, Julieta Corpus, and library advocate and former poet laureate for McAllen, Priscilla Celina “Lina” Suarez. Both have new books out! And we’ll be hosted by the incomparable Emmy Perez and Carolina Monsivais.
I’m in w o n d e r f u l company on April 22, 2022, 6:30 pm CT, for the annual Macondo reading. Funds raised will support the Macondo Summer 2022 workshops.
Check out this line up! Natalia Treviño, Willie Perdomo, Kay Ulanday Barrett, jo reyes-boitel and Reggie Scott Young. Our emcee this evening is Urayoán Noel. WOW.
I am enthralled by all the writing workshops, and the sheer diversity of those who are leading them for Write About Now. Accessibility is increasingly important and WAN leads by example.
Please review the offerings and sign up for a class or a suite of classes – and mine too, if it intrigues you! Register through this link so I get credit for leading you into your own best new writing. Thanks, babes.
My hybrid opera, she wears bells, will be part of Guerilla Underground’s annual streaming festival this Spring 2022! The opera, as produced by Palo Alto Theater at Palo Alto Community College in San Antonio, Texas, features a student cast and crew, with support from the college’s professors and staff.
Support independent artists and Guerilla Underground as they offer a space and the generation of new work. Tickets for the whole series can be bundled or, individual tickets can be purchased at $15. For more information about the series or to buy tickets visit here.
I’m excited to open for Leticia Urieta as we celebrate her new book, Las Criaturas. Come here her new understandings of the monstrosity we hold within us, and how sometimes that is the only thing that saves us. RSVP for this event at https://buff.ly/3HFCRgw. Come through!
And buy her book at www.flowersongpress.com!
Come listen to some of the most up-and-coming, impressive Latinx writers out now. Follow them. Buy their books!
On Zoom. Register to attend here.
Password: pachanga.
Several of my pieces about my family’s experience coming here from Cuba are now in this immense anthology, What They Leave Behind, edited by Vanessa Ferreira.
OyeDrum nominated one of my poems, “Hot House Flower”, for the annual Best of the Net awards organized by Sundress Publications. Many thanks to Founder and Editor-In-Chief Amarantha Da Cruz, who helps to lead the wonderful OyeDrum coven. You can find the poem and two others they chose here.
I submitted the piece in response to their call for poems about and around sex. It ended up being part of a wonderful online issue I’m proud to have been included in.
I wrote the poem in a moment of honesty with myself. Prior to this piece it was easy to lay blame on another, or to think my heart was noble but those I gave it to less so. In the poem I am not only responsible but the instigator in what could become an ill-chosen relationship.
Visit OyeDrum to see the work they do and support them with your readership, through submitting your own work, and with a donation.
I’ll try to make this clear:
I’m lost.
I saw you weeks ago on the street
after years of not you were just far enough
from the bar’s entrance noncommittal
cordiality is the art of denial
from “Hot House Flower”