#latinext

[bostonpoetryslam]

I am the deer no one resents until it leaves the forest and its divine architecture— how all green has a gate choking it.

Noel Quiñones, “ode to new money,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

If home is not bloodstained teeth and a taste for vengeance, it is seeing what has been coming all along and having the arms open to hold it.

Davon Clark, “Pantoum for Puerto Rico,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

But the sky above my childhood home, edging down the hill,      is a painting I carry, cast in a cheap gold frame,      to every room I've lived in since.

Andrés Cerpa, “Seasonal Without Spring: Summer,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

we call on god / in our goodbyes       adiós / name our children after him Jesús / suspended from our necks / beneath our breasts / pendulums / of piety / we carry the weight of him amén—why does the earth tremble / beneath us / when every day / like sackfuls of sand we spill over / onto this earth / with his name / blighted bark / in our mouths?

Ana Portnoy Brimmer, “A Sermon on the Subway and I Remember My Island,”  from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

I am afraid, of something I am, but have never named. My tongue is a refuge for secrets. How does one still fear banishment if they were born an exile?

Julian Randall, “On the Night I Consider Coming Out to My Parents,”  from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

When I am asked why I am so careful, or why the calculation takes so long, my only answer is my mother raised us to know some women don't have the luxury of fucking up the first time.

Sofía Snow, “Poems for Leila,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

here I stand / still / at the edge of this mouth this piercing pant / of a country / in perpetual weep and rage and plight / for what is betrayal if not happiness in a place not home

Ana Portnoy Brimmer, “Home,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext

[bostonpoetryslam]

Angélica Maria Aguilera, “The Red Dress,” from The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext