Meet Willy Palomo of Utah Slam Poetry Chapter

WILLY PALOMO (he/they/she) is the son of two immigrants from El Salvador. In 2018, he graduated with an MA in Latin American and Caribbean Studies and an MFA in Poetry from Indiana University. Writings can be found in Best New Poets 2018, Latino Rebels, Antologia de Posguerra, The Wandering Song: Central American Writing in the United States, and more. He is a founding member of Plumas Colectiva, a literary and art collective of Latin creators in the 801. He is the Director of the Utah Humanities Book Festival and President of the newest UTSPS Chapter-UTAH POETRY SLAM. More info on how to join this group, see https://www.utahpoets.com/chapter-utah-poetry-slam/

   

                                    How I learned to read by Willy Palomo  

¿Are you mi Mama? 

beckoned the birdie in our favorite book. 

Cuddled and coddled, I want to brag, 

decirte that she read to me the most,

every night. Except if you ask Mama, it was 

faith, not education, not knowledge, but the Holy 

Ghost which gave her the power to understand the scriptures, when she,

humiliated, confessed to the missionaries she didn’t know how to read. 

It never occurred to me until 

just now that if her story is true, then she never actually read me anything as a 

kid. She must have looked at 

letters & saw nothing but another endless 

maze of streets & signs, another 

nameless map of New York, left to navigate

on pure faith and instinct. She’d interpret 

pictures the same way she’d memorize streets the same way she’d read

quiet gringos, smirking as she passed. In 1st grade, I made it my goal to teach her to

read. I took out all our books in front of guests, 

spilling a library of shame into the room. I’d correct her English 

the same way I’d correct her children’s stories the same way I now write her story 

under a language she will never call home. There’s not a word for her

verdad in English, no matter how many times I try 

write it down. From a country where poets are 

executed & literacy meant little more than signing away

your name next to an X, she taught me to walk without 

zapatos, to read without an alphabet shackling my tongue.