Hispana Soy Yo Con Alegría

Hispana soy yo with the

Indigenous people of my country.

Spices and seasonings making the sauces of our

Pollo guisado and bandeja paisa.

An assortment of cumbias and merengues

Nothing can compare.

Alive are our spirits to the songs of our country

 

Singing and dancing

Overwhelmed with culture and history

Yellow, red, and blue

 

Young and free we are to the music

Of our country.

 

Connected are our ancestor

On the basis of traditions

Never neglecting our origins of existence

 

Appreciating our roots

Loving our rhythmic hips

Enjoying our habichuelas con arroz

Glorifying our beliefs

Rembraking on our history

Inciting our traditions

An Hispanic with pride I am.

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Home        

I enter through the door

The smells of baked pizza crust

And seasoned pasta

Invade my body

I am overwhelmed with greetings of faces I call family

 

My dad’s first restaurant

The place of my childhood

School is in recess

I step into the kitchen

My uncle works his magic

 

Salads are tossed

Spaghettis are marinated

Tomatoes crushed to a pulp perfection

Onions sliced to the crispest cut

Heavy creams and vodka fasten the flavors

 

Voalla!

Penne alla vodka

Concocted in Sandro’s Pizzeria

The place of my childhood

The place I’ll always call home

---

 

When Will It Be My Turn?

Body aching

Face tightening

Smelling my own fear

In agony and tears.

I am waiting and waiting

The clock hands are shifting

A woman walks in

With white and delicate skin.

Coughing and sneezing

Crying and panting

They immediately hear her

But what even for.

I am waiting and waiting

Pain still not abating

A foreign tongue heard

That was never learned.

Heartbeat draining

Face immensely flaming

Screaming in pain

Yet here we remain.

I am waiting and waiting

Body violently shaking

Gone is our livelihood

Our cries not understood.

No doctor or nurse

Feels like a curse

Sight slowly fading

I am waiting and waiting.

 

When will it be my turn?

When will it ever be our turn?

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Poetics Essay

In this Poetic Response assignment, I explored my creativity and expressed certain ideas through poetry. My poems are based on my hispanic identity, my dad’s former restaurant, and a social issue dealing with the effect of race on health and provided care. To strengthen the significance of my poems, I employed forms of rhetoric, syntax, lexicon, and figurative language.

In the first poem, I explored my ethnic identity and developed an acrostic poem with the words “Hispana soy yo con alegría” as depicted in the title. Imagery and cultural vocabulary is incorporated as to relate to an hispanic audience. Furthermore, syntax is employed in the title and last line when written, “Hispanic I am” instead of  “I am Hispanic” in order to enlarge focus on the word “Hispanic” rather than “I” as it is the central idea of the poem. Also, alliteration is used in the third line with the repetition of the letter “s”.

In the second poem, a free verse poem is illustrated regarding my fondness for the pizzeria my dad owned. It is a continuous poem lacking punctuation and its structure is broken into 4 stanzas, each containing 5 lines. Imagery is greatly employed to allow the reader to better visualize the scenery and understand my attachment to this place. In addition, lexicon is slightly used in the sense that the meaning of home for me, includes the setting I spent most of my childhood in, which is this restaurant, for which some is not be the case.

The third poem pertains to a social issue discussed by Miriam Zoila Perez in TED Talk of race determining the quality of medical care provided. To compliment the idea, I created a rhyme scheme of sorts to add rhythm and create a form of repetition with the line “I am waiting and waiting” to convey the idea to society that, although its 2018, people are still fighting the barriers of discrimination. The title of the poem was repeated in the last two lines, in order to reinforce the theme and is formed as rhetorical questions. The hidden meaning depicted is that of the speaker asking when will the time come in society for people of color and hispanics to be taken seriously and receive the care they deserve. In addition, the transition from the use of the word “I”/ “my” to “we”/ “our” draws focus to the people of color and hispanics as a whole.

The process for the creation of these poems was long one as it does involve plenty of thinking and creativity to get a message across to your reader, with a limited amount of words and phrases. The media and design of them play a huge role in determining the type of poem and hidden message being portrayed. All in all, the poems were build on the use of rhetorics, lexicon, and syntax to develop and strengthen the significance being elucidated.

 

 

Work Cited

Pérez, Miriam Zoila. TED: Ideas Worth Spreading,

www.ted.com/talks/miriam_zoila_perez_how_racism_harms_pregnant_women_and_what_can_help.