Rosa Alcalá

Rosa Alcalá

Rosa Alcalá is a poet and translator from Paterson, NJ. The New York Times describes her third and most recent book of poetry MyOTHER TONGUE as capturing “the messy emotions and miscommunications that move between languages” and a reminder of “how little precedent there is for honest writing [about mothers and daughters], compared with the epic traditions of fathers and sons.” Her poems and translations have appeared in numerous journals, including Harper’s, The Nation, Poetry, and American Poetry Review, as well as in the anthologies Best American Poetry (Scribner, 2019 & 21. The recipient of a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant to Artists, a National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellowship, and runner-up for a PEN Translation Award, she is the editor and co-translator of New & Selected Poems of Cecilia Vicuña (Kelsey Street Press, 2018). She is currently a Consulting Editor for the University of Chicago Press’ Phoenix Poets Series. Her fourth book of poems, YOU, is forthcoming from Coffee House Press in 2024.

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Combination of Cecilia Vicuña’s “Amaranta” (1972) and photo by Jr Korpa
Your Daughter Refashions the Flag into a Crop Top

Cecilia once told me she had to choose between poetry and painting, but she no longer believes this and is recovering what was stolen, rejected, lost. You bequeath to your daughter what was left of the flag, and rejecting its unflattering form, she refashions it into a crop top to show off her midriff. She’s on the verge of something, that beautiful precipice.