BIO
Victoria Muñoz-Lepore, aka Vicky Munyoz, was raised by a Nuyorican mother and Italian-American father in Medford, Massachusetts and currently resides in Queens. She has dedicated the majority of her adult years to mastering Spanish, and in 2011 graduated with an M.A. in Spanish from Middlebury College. She teaches Spanish to high school students in Brooklyn with language-based learning disabilities through storytelling and theatre with a thematic focus on Latin American histories. Vicky's poems have appeared in Fallujah Magazine, and her work has explored and mourned the often nonsensical and tragic worlds we find ourselves in through an unabashadely American lens. You can follow her on Medium @vickymunyoz.
THE LAMENTX BORINCANX MIXTAPE (POST-PULSE 6/21/16)
june 21st
bids farewell to
5 am wake-ups
daily hellos how are yous
coffees with extra milk, please and on repeat
it bids adiós to
my ongoing pondering cada potential detalle
of how to teach the forgotten lados of
la Historia de Puerto Rico
to a group of soon to be high school graduates
for whom this might be their last chance
I wrestle with the transition
because it’s over
and we barely made it to 1917
you know, the part where islanders become
non-voting soldiers
I wrestle
because they’ll vacation in Porto Rico
and enchanting beachscapes with
spoonfuls of no passport needed
amnesia and numbness will congeal
and then
the sun comes out to play
and I surprise myself when
I almost forget
my café con leche fix
the sun is on
full blast and out
to celebrate
it splashes
first day of summer
New York City sidewalks
it induces
a solstice trance
feeling like it’s midday and on repeat
like a Hector Lavoe song que nunca tiene su final
I bask
before needing
a Starbucks shot
of AC
and open-to-the-public bathroom
passion fruit sweetened iced tea,
(it’s too hot for café con leche)
graces my heat, my summer rhythm
while securing a future run
for another cold respite and pee break
when I return as promised
to an occupied bathroom
I wait
I wait which means
I take out my phone and scroll
images and
short blurb bios
instagrammed
with the latest newly minted hashtags
#Orlando #Pulse
too many last names ending in Z
Velázquez, Rodríguez, Menéndez,
too many proud and hiding
Pérez, Fernández, Cruz
too many from the Rich Port colony too many
the neverending bathroom line
doesn’t invite the sun
and my passion fruit iced tea
starts to taste of 1898
sugar plantations swishing in my mouth
the enclosed public bathroom smells
lay dead in the artificial modern cold air
and the jíbaro’s lament flickers
y el pueblo está lleno de necesidad
ay, de necesidad
the history lessons
I remember
them
the ones I rushed through
wishing I hadn’t
because will the kids
really get it?
qué será de mi Borinquén, mi Dios querido
will I?
will we?
have they been dying for everyone
but themselves since we saved them?
have we been dying for everyone
but ourselves since they saved us?
I scroll and sip
I don’t hold my...
“estoy jodida”
like my abuelita said on her final breath
on la isla del encanto
I am fucked
so too is the island
it’s people
who fled
to the barrios
of New York, South Florida etc.
only to die
with (some voting) dignity
the forgotten boricua in me
back to sipping hot café con leche
starts to remember, wonder,
“if only we hadn’t cut so much 20th century sugar cane
Starbucks wouldn’t be so addictively sweet?”
she scrolls on far away
from the sidewalks
from the longest day of the year
and further into the already lost lives
of fellow borincanxs