Amy Alvarez
Summer 2024 | Poetry
Borinquen
My memories begin here with
the itch of the pink and white
flower girl dress my abuela
sewed for me by hand, playing
with my abuelo on the beach.
I remember nightfall, being on
a carnival ride overlooking ocean,
my cousin throwing up after a night
of cotton candy and dizzying lights,
our young parents tipsy with rum
and heat. On my last trip to the island,
the pandemic was still in full swing.
The beach boardwalk shuttered;
museums closed. I remember
decades ago, being surrounded
by my family speaking in Spanish,
Spanglish, English, my grandmother
forcing me to eat a fisheye claiming
it would make me smarter, the open
door on the plane ride from San Juan
to Ponce, leading to a wild sky. Even as
my mother gripped me tight, I still pulled
toward the open door and all that blue.
Amy M. Alvarez is the author of the poetry collection Makeshift Altar (2024) and the co-editor of Essential Voices: A COVID-19 Anthology (2023). Selected as one of 2022’s Best New Poets, her poetry has appeared in Ploughshares, The Missouri Review, Alaska Quarterly Review, Poetry Foundation, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. She has been awarded fellowships from CantoMundo, VONA, Macondo, the Virginia Creative Arts Center, and the Furious Flower Poetry Center. In 2022, she was inducted as an Affrilachian Poet. Amy was born in New York City to Jamaican and Puerto Rican parents. She has taught at high schools in the Bronx, New York, and Boston, Massachusetts, and at West Virginia University. She currently teaches at Boston College.