Poet X Quotes

I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.

Burn it! Burn it. This is where the poems are,” I say, thumping a fist against my chest. “Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too?

The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it.

Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody's friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don't want to be in their own.

Just because your father's present, doesn't mean he isn't absent.

Late into the night I write and the pages of my notebook swell from all the words I’ve pressed onto them. It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.

And isn't that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

I will never let anyone see my full heart and destroy it.

We're different, this poet and I. In looks, in body, in background. But I don't feel so different when I listen to her. I feel heard.

She tells me words give people permission to be their fullest self and aren't these the poems I most needed to hear?

Their gazes and words are heavy with all the things they want you to be.

My parents probably wanted a girl who would sit in the pews wearing pretty florals and a soft smile. They got combat boots and a mouth silent until it’s sharp as an island machete.

Pero, tú no eres fácil.” You sure ain’t an easy one.

My brother was born a soft whistle: quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound. But I was born all the hurricane he needed to lift - and drop- those that hurt him to the ground.

When has anyone ever told me I had the right to stop it all without my knuckles, or my anger, with just some simple words.

When your body takes up more room than your voice, you are always the target of well-aimed rumors.

It's about any of the words that bring us together and how we can form a home in them.

Sometimes it seems like writing is the only way I keep from hurting.

One thing I know for sure is that reputations last longer than the time it takes to make them.

Your silence furnishes a dark house. But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.

I only know that learning to believe in the power of my own words has been the most freeing experience of my life. It has brought me the most light. And isn’t that what a poem is? A lantern glowing in the dark.

The way the words say what I mean, how they twist and turn language, how they connect with people. How they build community.

I've forced my skin as thick as I am.

I close my eyes and let myself find in music what I've always searched for: a way away.

He is not elegant enough for a sonnett, too well-thought-out for a free write, taking too much space in my thoughts to ever be a haiku.

Maybe there are no words to say. I just want to be held.

She knew since she was little, the world would not sing her triumphs, but she took all of the stereotypes and put them in a chokehold until they breathed out the truth.

That's when I feel like a fake. Because I nod, and clap, and "Amen" and Aleluya," all the while feeling like this house his house is no longer one I want to rent.

Sometimes someone says something and their words are like the catch of a gas stove, the click, click while you’re waiting for it to light up and flame big and blue...

If I were on fire who could I count on to water me down? If I were a pile of ashes who could I count on to gather me in a pretty urn? If I were nothing but dust would anyone chase the wind trying to piece me back together?

i think of all the things we could be if we were not told our bodies were not made for them.

After It happens when I’m at bodegas. It happens when I’m at school. It happens when I’m on the train. It happens when I’m standing on the platform. It happens when I’m sitting on the stoop. It happens when I’m turning the corner. It happens when I forget to be on guard. It happens all the time. I should be used to it. I shouldn’t get so angry when boys—and sometimes grown-ass men— talk to me however they want, think they can grab themselves or rub against me or make all kinds of offers. But I’m never used to it. And it always makes my hands shake. Always makes my throat tight. The only thing that calms me down after Twin and I get home is to put my headphones on. To listen to Drake. To grab my notebook, and write, and write, and write all the things I wish I could have said. Make poems from the sharp feelings inside, that feel like they could carve me wide open. It happens when I wear shorts. It happens when I wear jeans. It happens when I stare at the ground. It happens when I stare ahead. It happens when I’m walking. It happens when I’m sitting. It happens when I’m on my phone. It simply never stops.

About a holy trinity that don’t include the mother.

....and my heart is one of Darwin's Finches, learning to fly.

It was just a poem, Xiomara, I think. But it felt more like a gift.

If I were nothing but dust, would anyone chase the wind trying to piece me back together?

God, if you're a thing with ears: please, please.

There is freedom in coming and going for no other reason than because you can. There is freedom in choosing to sit and be still when everything is always telling you to move, move fast.

And even that young I learned music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger. -Xiomara

Sometimes the best way to love someone is to let them go.

This was supposed to be a question. Not a poem confession or whatever it's become. I just want to know if you would listen with me to the sound of our heartbeats.

When I’m told girls Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. Shouldn’t. When I’m told To wait. To stop. To obey. When I’m told not to be like Delilah. Lot’s Wife. Eve. When the only girl I’m supposed to be was an impregnated virgin

The world is almost peaceful when you stop trying to understand it.

Freedom seems like such a big word. Something too big; maybe like a skyscraper I've glimpsed from the foot of the building but never been invited to climb.

If Medusa was Dominican and had a daughter, she might wonder at this curse. At how her blood is always becoming some fake hero's mission. Something to be slayed, conquered.

I broke out into a sweat and the worlds of Rilke, the poet, entered my brain -- his notion that we are all of us born with a letter inside us, and that only if we are true to ourselves, may we be allowed to read it before we die.

What's the point of God giving me life, if I can't live it as my own?

But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.

My little words feel important, for just a moment. This is a feeling I could get addicted to.

There is freedom in choosing to sit and be still when everything is always telling you to move, move fast.

But who knew the words, when said by the right person, by a boy who raises your temperature, move heat like nothing else? Shoot a shock of warmth from your curls to your toes?

That my poetry has become something I'm proud of. The way the words say what I mean, how they twist and turn language, how they connect with people. How they build a community.

And I think of all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.

Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody's friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don't want to be in their own.

And I'm disgusted at myself for the slight excitement that shivers up my back at the same time that I wish my body could fold into the tiniest corner for me to hide in.

That love can be a band: tears if you pull it too hard, but also flexible enough to stretch around the most chaotic mass

She’s also little—like, for real petite— but carries herself big, know what I mean? Like she’s used to shouldering her way through any assumptions made about her.

She tell me words give people permission to be their fullest self.

Just because your father’s present doesn’t mean he isn’t absent.

Because so many of the poems tonight felt a little like our own stories. Like we saw and were seen. And how crazy would it be if I did that for someone else?

She tells me words give people permission to be their fullest self. And aren’t these the poems I’ve most needed to hear?

My brother was birthed a soft whistle: quiet, barely stirring the air, a gentle sound. But I was born all the hurricane he needed to lift—and drop—those that hurt him to the ground.

while I watch her hands, and face, feeling like she's talking directly to me. She's saying the thoughts I didn't know anyone else had. We're different, this poet and I. In looks, in body, in background. But I don't feel so different when I listen to her. I feel heard. -Xiomara

She would smile and say I was her premio for hard work, I was her premio for patience. And I loved being her reward. The golden trophy of her life. I just don’t know when I got too big for the appointed pedestal.

Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody’s friend is that you help them be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don’t want to be in their own.

It almost feel like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals. (p. 283)

The world's been waiting for your genius a long time.

It is ungrateful to feel like a burden. It is ungrateful to resent my own birth. I know that Twin and I are miracles. Aren’t we reminded every single day?

Except. I once heard a rumor that goldfish have an evolutionary gene where they’ll only develop as big as the tank they’re put into. They need space to stretch. And I wonder if Twin and I are keeping each other small. Taking up the space that would have let the other grow.

Every day I searched for new songs, and it was like applying for asylum.

That love can be a band: tears if you pull it too hard, but also flexible enough to stretch around the most chaotic mass.

And even that young I learned music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger.

But maybe my silence. Just made him feel more alone. Maybe my silence. Condones the ugly things people think.

Every day I searched for new songs, and it was like applying for asylum. I just needed someone to help me escape from all the silence. I just needed people saying words about all the things that hurt them. And maybe this is why Papi stopped listening to music, because it can make your body want to rebel. To speak up. And even that young I learned music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger.

Maybe, the only thing that has to make sense about being somebody's friend is that you help them to be their best self on any given day. That you give them a home when they don't want to be in their own. -Xiomara

And I'm disgusted at myself for the slight excitement that shivers up my back at the same time that I wish my body could fold into the tiniest corner for me to hide in.

If my body was a Country Club soda bottle, it's one that has been shaken and dropped and at any moment it's gonna pop open and surprise the whole damn world.

music can become a bridge between you and a total stranger.

You Don’t Have to Do Anything You Don’t Want to Do.

I would take that beating again to be with him.

She calls every year on my birthday. I've stopped asked her when she's coming. Pops and I get on just fine. I've learned not to be angry. Sometimes the best way to love someone is to let them go.

In a way it is even humiliating to watch coal-miners working. It raises in you a momentary doubt about your own status as an ‘intellectual’ and a superior person generally. For it is brought home to you, at least while you are watching, that it is only because miners sweat their guts out that superior persons can remain superior. You and I and the editor of the Times Lit. Supp., and the Nancy poets and the Archbishop of Canterbury and Comrade X, author of Marxism for Infants – all of us really owe the comparative decency of our lives to poor drudges underground, blackened to the eyes, with their throats full of coal dust, driving their shovels forward with arms and belly muscles of steel.

The weird thing about the bible is that almost everything in it is a metaphor. So it seems to me that when the bible describes church as a place where two or more people discuss God, they don’t mean just the cathedral like churches. I don’t know what, who or where God is; but if everything is a metaphor, I think he or she is a comparison to us. I think we are like, or as God. I think when we get together, and talk about ourselves, about being human, about what hurts us; we are also talking about God. So that’s also church, right? I know this might seem blasphemous, but my priest tells me its okay to ask questions, even if they seem bizarre.

The day my period came in fifth grade, was just that, the ending of a childhood sentence. The next phrase starting in all CAPS.

If Medusa was Dominican and had a daughter, I think I'd be her. I look and feel like a myth. A story distorted, waiting for others to stop and stare.

My hands learned how to bleed when other kids tried to make him into a wound.

Will you burn me? Will you burn me, too? You would burn me, wouldn't you, if you could?

Remember anger is as much a sin as any Xiomara may have committed. We all need time to come to terms with certain things, don’t we?

And I think about all the things we could be if we were never told our bodies were not built for them.

It almost feels like the more I bruise the page the quicker something inside me heals.

Sometimes I want to tell her, the only person in this house who isn't heard is me.

Que tu padre esté presente, no significa que no esté ausente.

the world I’ve lived in wears masking tape over its mouth.

But even at the risk of burning, the moth always seeks the light.

When your body takes up more room than your voice you are always the target of well-aimed rumors,

This year, Mami has filled out the forms, signed me up, and marched me to church before I can tell her that Jesus feels like a friend I’ve had my whole childhood who has suddenly become brand-new; who invites himself over too often, who texts me too much. A friend I just don’t think I need anymore. (I know, I know . . . even writing that is blasphemous.) But I don’t know how to tell Mami that this year, it’s not about feeling unready, it’s about knowing that this doubt has already been confirmed.

Because no one will ever take care of me but me.

It’s funny how the smallest moments are like dominoes lining up, being stacked with the purpose of knocking you on your ass. In a good way.

Tú dices que todo esto es culpa de mi boca. Porque tenía hambre, porque era callada. pero ¿y la boca tuya? Cómo tus labios son grapas que me perforan rápido y fuerte. Y las palabras que nunca dije quedan mejor muertas en mi lengua porque solamente hubieran chocado contra la puerta cerrada de tu espalda. Tu silencio amuebla una casa oscura. Pero aun a riesgo de quemarse, la mariposa nocturna siempre busca la luz