Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo
2 Poems
The High Dive
When I see my nephew’s sun and chlorine-bleached hair smoothly gelled like a
gentleman, pompadour cresting in a ducktail, his mother shaking her head at his
refusal to use the damage shampoo she bought, “Won’t even shower,” she says
to which he
shrugs, “I’ll just
get dirty again,”
when I think
of his hair
as a badge
of pride earned
lapping lanes,
prepubescent
limbs cutting
water, growing
stronger,
more man
with each stroke,
I’m reminded
of the pools
of Lake Chapala,
and how he
flooded gates
bound for
the high dive,
hands on ladder,
no hesitation,
flew so fast
I nearly missed
the chance to
raise my phone
— SNAP! —
flung body before
the blue below.
If La Llorona Had a Hashtag
If la llorona were
always very quiet
no one would call her
an evil woman
- Gina Valdés, Bridges and Borders
If she had been very quiet
no one would know her.
The story would be no story,
just as there is no name.
If La Llorona had a hashtag
it might be #mishijos,
or #remembermishijos,
or #volvervolvervolver.
Then maybe citizens
might question
how her children drowned
and by whose hands.
Because if I know anything,
it wasn’t by her own.
True crime TV and murder
podcasts have taught me
the guilty sleep well,
the guilty keep trophies,
the guilty know the order of events
and how to draw a map.
But the guilty don’t cry,
not for the dead,
especially not for babies
born open rivers.
Bio
Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo is the daughter of Mexican immigrants and author of Posada: Offerings of Witness and Refuge (Sundress Publications 2016). Her second collection, Incantation: Love Poems for Battle Sites is forthcoming from Mouthfeel Press in fall 2023. A former Steinbeck Fellow and Poets & Writers California Writers Exchange winner, she’s received residencies from Hedgebrook, Ragdale, National Parks Arts Foundation in partnership with Gettysburg National Military Park and Poetry Foundation. Her poem “Battlegrounds” was featured at Academy of American Poets’ Poem-a-Day, On Being’s Poetry Unbound, and the anthology, Poetry Unbound: 50 Poems to Open Your World (W.W. Norton). She is the director of Women Who Submit and teaches poetry and creative writing with Antioch University, MFA and UCLA Extension. Inspired by her Chicana identity, she works to cultivate love and comfort in chaotic times.