Poetry
SPRING 2022promises
by DORSÍA SMITH SILVA
we want hurricane season to shrug //: into a
shut statement //: say won’t be a bother
at all //: won’t topple trees like fingers without
shame //: crumple houses like new boots looking
for an old trail //: Con calma //: Respira //: we
want hurricane season to give //: better odds of
windowsill waiting //: say won’t ransack cupboards
like some errant guest visitor //: won’t come
uninvited like noise jumping in children’s clothes //: Es
cierto //: Seguro //: we want hurricane season to
evaporate //: like distilled memory vapor //: &
shoestring tie up into history books like velcroed
rough stars //: promise a season without fresh
batteries //: flatfooted //: promise a season without
bloody fingerprints //: softboiled //: promise //:
Dorsía Smith Silva
Dorsía Smith Silva is a four-time Pushcart Prize nominee, Best of the Net finalist, Best New Poets nominee, Cave Cavem Poetry Prize Semifinalist, Obsidian Fellow, and full professor of English at the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Queen Mary Wasafiri New Writing Prize (2021) and has recently been published or is forthcoming in Crazyhorse, Cream City Review, Poetry Northwest, the minnesota review, The Offing, Shenandoah, and elsewhere. She is the author of Good Girl (micro-chapbook), editor of Latina/Chicana Mothering, and the co-editor of seven books. She has also attended the Bread Loaf Environmental Writers’ Workshop, Bread Loaf Writers’ Workshop, Tin House Workshop, and the Kenyon Review Writers’ Workshop. She has a PhD in Caribbean literature and posts on Twitter @DSmithSilva.