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Avalon
  • Home
  • Spring 2025
    • Poetry
      • A Soulmate
      • All the Globe's a Stage
      • At The Water's Edge
      • Big Sisters
      • Cotton-Stuffed Heart
      • Doom, Sleep, Mastication, and My Godson Jeremiah
      • Foolish Lemons
      • I Know Icarus
      • nightstand as self-portrait
      • one thousand three hundred and eighty-eight days
      • Pasiphaë
      • Poem for a Stranger
      • Pilot of the Hollow Vessel
      • Rehoming; or, a habitat for creatures who seek darkness and cold
      • Sanctuary
      • The World Inside a Sidewalk Crack
      • Year of the Frog
      • you think it's easy opening doors in january?
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 Fall 2024     Poetry 

Americana

Giovanna Barham

Home is a place

far away,

where the saguaros stand taller

than the people,

where the dry air caresses

your face,

where the food has love—

that you can taste;

guacamole, pico de gallo,

limón, arroz con carne asada,

food that you miss

when you cannot have it

food that holds you in its embrace

food that crosses generational lines.

 

I am American, but never enough to be.

I am Mexicana, but not enough.  I walk the line.

I am Pinay, but barely enough to be.

I am a tree ripped away from my roots.

 

Spanish words fall from my mouth;

people stare, people gawk.

English words, no one cares.  America the Great

Melting Pot.

People judge,

I must have crossed a border

and was burned by the sun to be where I am,

assume that I do not speak English,

but I can only be American,

and never who I truly am.

 

People would treat me

differently if they knew;

“you’re Mexican,” a girl away

from the soil of her home,

feeling like an outlander

in a culture

that is simultaneously

hers.


Air Bubbles

Americana

anatomy of a prude

Cassandra

Cortisol Rising

faucet

i don't feel myself in this world anymore

Melvin

Meteoric Parallax

Mourning

Post-Service

Temporary Love

The Blue Heron

To Laugh at Depravity

Wolfpack

You saw through the broken glass of the window pane

your blade is a peeler

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