BIO
Leonora Simonovis grew up in Caracas, Venezuela and currently lives in San Diego, CA, where she's a full-time faculty of Spanish, Latin American, and Caribbean literature at the University of San Diego. She's a latina woman of color, an exile, a VONA (Voices of All Nations Arts Foundation) fellow, and a Contributing Editor for Drizzle Review, where she highlights the work of emerging and underrepresented writers. Her poetry, en English and Spanish has appeared in The American Journal of Poetry, Poets Reading the News and Fron/tera. She also has work forthcoming in Roar, Literature and Revolution by Feminist People, Tiferet and the 2018 Cosmographia anthology.
Arrival
after the flight I stumble
down a metal staircase,
shivering in the sun’s
insipid warmth
to my right the Pacific
glints like a chemical element,
no smell of rotten fish and
brine, nothing shimmers here
a Customs officer asks
question after question after
question i autocorrect
and apologize going over
prepositions and past tense
conjugations. thinking about tv
shows where Colgate smiles
invite viewers to bleach them-
selves into perfection
this is no Hollywood movie
i am not arriving and my
fingerprint is not cooperating
my name an unpronounceable
obstacle More questions
from my cab driver where are
you from? ah, the land of
beautiful women what’s
it like? i tell him farther than
Mexico, no English i tell him
we fry the fish whole
and suck on the eye for luck,
until all that remains is a little
white ball rolling “erres” on the
tongue i tell him we watch
lighting tickle the top of the ocean
from the shore. radiance prying
open the top of the horizon
sounds like a wonderful place!
you have beautiful skin, you know?
your teeth are so white!
i read about a little boy telling
his mama not to cry. He opened
his mouth, showed his teeth, no scars
on his back so a planter bought him
i finger my passport, shredding
myself in unrecognizable layers
stamped into a ready-made exis-
tence like the hook on a fish’s
lip pulling flesh away from memory
Necessary Rituals
a goat’s carcass dozes on hot
coals, flavors infused by soil and
dung. men tear meat pinked
by the setting sun. another life
lost in the crossing. they drink
pulque, slice grains of sand with
their blades, toss them in the
water to exorcise their fears
living on the border they become
storytellers, edging words towards
the fence, loosing La Llorona and
Huitchilopochtli on the other side
if you swallow a fallen star you can
cross to the other side on the back of
a flying coyote, they tell the children,
like Aladdin and the genie making
wishes to stop reality from happening
but no Disney soundtrack can play the
disembodied silence coming from the
other side. El Norte means nowhere
a pinky finger slides through the metal
grid, reaching for hope and finding it gone
Voices
The women in my family iron
my curls, fumes of burning hair
stiffened by water and heat
No te cases con un negro, don’t
marry a Black man. Your children
will look like pan quemado
It’s all in the hair they say, Abuela
wearing her red turbante,
like the Jamaicans selling fruit
at the metro station She only takes it
off for special occasions
too much work and she doesn’t need a
man Abuelo being dead and all
I look at my reflection, wondering
who I want to be wondering if I
want what they never had Their
voices bring me back:
hay que mejorar la raza, mija
prune the family like an orange tree
spoonfuls of aloe slime on my skin
Un carbón, mija, pareces un carbón,
I stand in the line of redemption
Sisters, mothers, grandmothers,
godmothers whispering: find a man,
grab him, make sure he stays The
lighter the skin the better the outcome
They pray to the Virgen de Coromoto
our patron saint my brownness
scrubbed, straightened, peeled like a
scab rawness starts to settle I pray
too but not with them I hope
Mary Magdalene is listening