This story features poems on life and struggle in the Latino immigrant community. Who are the poets? They are working class women, with diverse experiences and backgrounds, writing poetry together for the first time.
In February and March 2025, El Tímpano invited their text message subscribers to participate in poetry writing workshops to reflect on their experiences during the hard-hitting pandemic and its aftermath. I was their instructor and guide through this process. The group worked in a restorative community circle, which allowed everyone to take turns speaking and sharing their thoughts. The women then wrote in response to a series of discussions and prompts that sparked poetry and other writing.
They wrote poems and prose about their lives and losses during and after the pandemic. The pandemic’s impacts on their lives – and our lives too – haven’t ended. Their poems became a shield and a circle to mourn and to look beyond the horizon to imagine our community in a better place.
Each participant has a migration story: They crossed and continue crossing borders. This experience anchors and shapes everything that they face. Their hardships, including losing loved ones to the pandemic and the travails of working people, tempered their words. To write poetry was another border they crossed. And in the process, their lives become inseparable from their poems. And when you write poetry like this, a new power emerges.
There is no power like the power of a working class woman who writes. The renowned Chicana writer, Gloria Anzaldúa, put it clearly: “A woman who writes has power, and a woman with power is feared.”
Except our poets are not to be feared but embraced. Their words are our words. These women are our unsung matriarchs, holding our people and families together. And when the matriarchs write poetry their power transforms our community and our dreams for justice and peace. They made poetry out of their lives, offering their power, poetry, life, to everyone.
Here are their poems.
Life was more open
Life before
the pandemic
was more open.
We went out with confidence
and felt like we were breathing fresh air.
What I loved was
going camping with family and friends in the community.
Most of us knew each other from the block,
and we hung out
with those we trusted the most.
Working was fantastic,
and finding work was easier and faster.
For me, the challenge was
my medical condition
because I had to go to doctor’s appointments very frequently.
I loved walking outdoors
and once a week I would meet up
with friends for a cup of tea or coffee.
— Felicitas Embriz
▶️ Listen to Felicitas read her poem in Spanish:
Hope united us
Uncertainty came
hand in hand
with fear.
It appeared, trapped
by an uncertain destiny,
with conflicting feelings,
discovering a deserted path at every step.
Helplessness compounded
the confusion
with so many souls losing the battle.
Fear covered us
with its cloak,
keeping us distant,
completely separated.
But hope united us.
It arrived just when it was time,
giving us the responsibility
to take care of ourselves
in order to take care of others.
And not resigned,
we learned,
although separated,
but together, to fight.
— Angela
▶️ Listen to Angela read her poem in Spanish:
I will never forget
I will never
forget the change
the pandemic wrought
as long as I live.
I felt like I was dying in agony.
I thought about my family and friends.
The oxygen in my body
was running out. I was hospitalized.
I felt like my day was over.
I thanked
God the Father
for everything.
I entrusted
my daughters and grandchildren to Him,
who were worried about my health.
I felt compelled
to go to the window
and look at the blue, starry night sky.
My tired and weak eyesight scanned
the firmament.
For the last time,
I give thanks
for another chance at life.
The saddest thing is
that many of my friends
passed away before me.
They passed away
before me
because the pandemic
took them away.
I will never see them again.
I live with aftereffects, but I am grateful.
-Nuria Dardón
▶️ Listen to Nuria read her poem in Spanish:
The symphony
In the city symphony. The melodic touch of neighboring languages, the T’s of dialects. The sound of river water hitting ancient rocks. In the voice of God, “there was no more power, no more truth, no more love.”
Out of a thousand loves, not one more did favors for others. Out of a thousand loves, not one less wanted respect, but the good kind. The collective awareness that while others die, one is still alive. How painful those families were. But they were not alone, and in those who had celebrated.
Take care of the volume of happiness, for absence hurts more face to face than joy.
— Celia
▶️ Listen to Celia read her poem in Spanish:
