Pronounced
You excavate anything that has tried to lodge itself
in your body without permission. You bury the toothbrush
against your right molar and scrape and scrape whatever
you find. Loss makes you feel all the other losses.
Eleven years later when you no longer eat pizza
or speak Spanish, when your father’s silhouette invades
your clenched jawline, you borrow his brisk gait,
his snort, his face. People say you look white.
Your father never does. The restaurant won’t seat
you. The hostess says neither of you meet dress
code (your father wearing a double-breasted suit).
You are a man trying to roll your r’s. Where did
the words go? You are still trying to excavate the sounds
you once dreamt in. You hardly remember your mother
tongue. You are trying to pull something useable from
the wreckage. It all feels familiar. Your best friend
compliments your clean pronunciation. The way you have
learned to let go of everything you once called home.
in your body without permission. You bury the toothbrush
against your right molar and scrape and scrape whatever
you find. Loss makes you feel all the other losses.
Eleven years later when you no longer eat pizza
or speak Spanish, when your father’s silhouette invades
your clenched jawline, you borrow his brisk gait,
his snort, his face. People say you look white.
Your father never does. The restaurant won’t seat
you. The hostess says neither of you meet dress
code (your father wearing a double-breasted suit).
You are a man trying to roll your r’s. Where did
the words go? You are still trying to excavate the sounds
you once dreamt in. You hardly remember your mother
tongue. You are trying to pull something useable from
the wreckage. It all feels familiar. Your best friend
compliments your clean pronunciation. The way you have
learned to let go of everything you once called home.
1. Since you published with Crab Creek Review, how has your work grown or changed? What excites you now that maybe didn't back then?
Since I published with Crab Creek Review, I'm a bit less self-conscious about my generative process than I was then. During that time, I was about halfway through my MFA at Warren Wilson, and everything about writing felt overwrought, anguish-riddled, and painstaking (including the generative process), which I've (at least, temporarily) moved past. This is not to say I'm not painstaking in my revision process, but I'm a bit more reckless and freed in the generative phase right now. I now relish in what once seemed impossible.
2. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
Some of the most important advice I've received, from several mentors, regarding both the initial drafting process and also submitting is: "Don't be precious with it." And by that, I mean, allow the generative/drafting process to be uninhibited, free from judgment, moved by a kind of reckless abandon to explore and seek awe. Why be careful about it? I can always cut away or reframe in revisions.
When it comes to submitting, why not just submit to all the places you dream about publishing your work? I've had poems rejected 30 or even 40 times and then land with a journal I thought might never showcase my work. It's just a numbers game: the more acceptances, the more rejections. I had one year (2018) where I had 26 poems accepted for publication. That same year, I also received 104 rejections. I refuse to be discouraged by rejection.
3. What are you reading?
I'm finally reading Tommy Orange's brilliant novel There There, which has been on my bedside table for a while. I highly recommend it.
4. What are you working on?
I have a genre-transcending collaboration (that involves poetry) in the works right now, which has been in process for nearly a year. It's way too early to say much more about it other than that it should be released mid-2021 and I'm not sure I've ever been so excited about a creative project in my life. More to come...
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet from New York City. His debut full-length poetry collection Fractures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) was selected by Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the 2020 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Winner of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry and the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, Gómez has been published in New England Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Yale Review, BuzzFeed Reader, Crab Creek Review, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere. Carlos is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. For more, please visit: CarlosLive.com
Since I published with Crab Creek Review, I'm a bit less self-conscious about my generative process than I was then. During that time, I was about halfway through my MFA at Warren Wilson, and everything about writing felt overwrought, anguish-riddled, and painstaking (including the generative process), which I've (at least, temporarily) moved past. This is not to say I'm not painstaking in my revision process, but I'm a bit more reckless and freed in the generative phase right now. I now relish in what once seemed impossible.
2. Is there a particular piece of advice you received that you found yourself returning to as you've written over the years? Is there any advice you would give to writers submitting their work?
Some of the most important advice I've received, from several mentors, regarding both the initial drafting process and also submitting is: "Don't be precious with it." And by that, I mean, allow the generative/drafting process to be uninhibited, free from judgment, moved by a kind of reckless abandon to explore and seek awe. Why be careful about it? I can always cut away or reframe in revisions.
When it comes to submitting, why not just submit to all the places you dream about publishing your work? I've had poems rejected 30 or even 40 times and then land with a journal I thought might never showcase my work. It's just a numbers game: the more acceptances, the more rejections. I had one year (2018) where I had 26 poems accepted for publication. That same year, I also received 104 rejections. I refuse to be discouraged by rejection.
3. What are you reading?
I'm finally reading Tommy Orange's brilliant novel There There, which has been on my bedside table for a while. I highly recommend it.
4. What are you working on?
I have a genre-transcending collaboration (that involves poetry) in the works right now, which has been in process for nearly a year. It's way too early to say much more about it other than that it should be released mid-2021 and I'm not sure I've ever been so excited about a creative project in my life. More to come...
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Colombian American poet from New York City. His debut full-length poetry collection Fractures (University of Wisconsin Press, 2020) was selected by Natasha Trethewey as the winner of the 2020 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry. Winner of the Sandy Crimmins National Prize for Poetry and the Atlanta Review International Poetry Prize, Gómez has been published in New England Review, Beloit Poetry Journal, The Yale Review, BuzzFeed Reader, Crab Creek Review, CHORUS: A Literary Mixtape (Simon & Schuster, 2012), and elsewhere. Carlos is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania and the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College. For more, please visit: CarlosLive.com