Eloisa Gómez

CONTACT:
gomez.eloisa11@gmail.com

BIO:
Eloisa’s published poems, Charlie's Coat, was included in the Bards Against Hunger Chapbook – 2018 Wisconsin Edition (Local Gems Press) and Manuelita La Mariposa in Bramble Literary Magazine, Fall 2022 Edition. She was a Write on Door Co. writer in residence in November 2018.  

Eloisa co-authored the book, Somos Latinas:  Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists, (Wisconsin Historical Society Press) which won the 2019 “IPPY” (Independent Publisher) Award in the Women’s Studies category and won First Place in the 2019 Social Justice Category from Next Gen Indie Book Awards.

She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where she continues to research Latina activism and is a member of the South Shore Poets’ and the Sparks.  She can be reached at: gomez.eloisa11@gmail.com

PUBLICATIONS:

Bards against Hunger Chapbook – 2018 Wisconsin Edition (Local Gems Press, 2018)

Somos Latinas: Voices of Wisconsin Latina Activists, (Wisconsin Historical Society Press, 2018)

Poetry

Manuelita La Mariposa

My friend suggested I name you
on your third visit to my yard.

You, mellowing in the center
on my magnificent
Mexican sunflowers of
tangerine petals.

Sharon said planting them
would bring the butterflies--
that word, having wings of its own,
entered my head as
mariposas

porque esa es la palabra que conozco mejor
porque esa es la palabra que conocí primero.

I named you, Manuelita.
It had to start with M, for mariposa

and M for migration and
M for Michoacán,
the place of your journey’s end.

My family’s migration occurred
generations ago from
the very place you are heading.

Let the burrowed air of your path
carry my own winged memories
to a place where we once belonged.

Charlie’s Coat

I was ten and scrawny back in the ‘60s
when Charlie and his family moved
into a dilapidated house next to ours.

A congested neighborhood of too many
kids with too little space made the cracked
concrete alleys our playground.

I was curious about Charlie—
an older teen; short and stocky,
with a long face, rutted cheeks and
skin more gray than white.

That fall and winter I sometimes
watched as he came and went, alone.
He wore the same button-down
brown, plaid wool coat every day.
His arms, longer than normal,
swung with each slow, long step.

Charlie died that winter. The swift
announcement that he was hit by a car
with no other details was code talk for,
And don’t ask any more questions.

The next morning, looking out
my bedroom window, I saw
Charlie’s younger brother, Leo, leave
his house. He wore Charlie’s plaid coat.

I stared and my eyes told me
something I shouldn’t have known;
that when you are real poor,
you wear the clothes
of someone who just died—

and you keep walking.