Dahlia Aguilar
Migrant Bop
They are dispersing instructions
Ten easy steps to avoid your annihilation
Comes with a way to fight genocide politely
Look away, look away and still see
Papi, you wouldn’t believe it
Season after season
sé que en el mundo hay dolor
pero no es dolor el mundo
Don’t forget to share the plan
With your children, what to do
Should you vanish, how to carry on
When you become vapor. Don’t worry,
you tell them. The world gifted us
doubt and freedom. I will come
for you. After a season, or
After the season next.
sé que en el mundo hay dolor
pero no es dolor el mundo
As you taught me, I don’t
thank uniforms for their service
when I pass them on the street
sé que en el mundo hay dolor
pero no es dolor el mundo
Bio
Dahlia Aguilar is a Chicana poet and D.C. Arts and Humanities Fellow. She has held residencies with Macondo, Under the Volcano, Elk River, and Gemini Ink. Her poems appear in various journals including Naugatuck River Review, Acentos Review, and The Skinny Poetry Journal, as well as in the anthologies If the Trees Were Pens, Boundless, Somos Xicanas and the forthcoming ¡XICANAS! Art & Poetry Anthology. In 2026 Finishing Line press is publishing her debut poetry collection La Otra Cara as part of its New Women's Voices Series. A member of Tintas DC and Círculo de Poetas and Writers, Aguilar’s work moves between tenderness and defiance, interrogating power, memory, and survival with the intimacy of lived witness. She lives in Washington, D.C., with her teenage son, two dogs, and menopause.