An honorable mention from the 2024 Bird in Your Hands Contest
CHILDHOOD SUEÑOS
I was born in an English-speaking country
to Spanish-speaking parents
who hid their language behind walls
of inferiority and an internalized shame
because they felt too brown, too dirty,
too ignorant, too Puerto Rican for an
Ah MEH ree KA
that expected them to wash away
their hermosa cultura con ivory soap,
the same one they used to clean
all those too many mouths to feed,
the ones who leave too many dirty plates
in the kitchen sink of a too-cramped
apartment—that will never have a
white Pik EET fence
around a manicured lawn of a dream
house the size of my parents’ sueños
for me and my brothers, unaware that
all we ever wanted was another kind
of vida, the one with a sun-kissed
KA rib BE yan
countryside lined with towering
coconut palm trees where never too many
barefoot brown Puerto Rican kids play in
the dirt, unaware of a concrete cosmopolis
they would one day mistake for
home.
Lola Rosario is a spoken-word poet, freelance journalist and translator from New York City whose work centers on Puerto Rican identity, colonization, and a myriad of social justice issues. Her journalism has been featured in NACLA, Latina Media, Green Left (Australia), and Palabra, among others. Her first poetry chapbook is forthcoming in May 2024 with Editorial Pulpo. She returned to her ancestral motherland, the unceded land of Borikén in November 2021, and makes her home in the vibrant coastal town of Loíza. You can find her on Instagram @lolaslines and at lolaslines.com.
Thin Air 