Poem of the Week: Ruth Irupé Sanabria

Hija

I am the daughter of doves

That disappeared into dust

Hear my pulse whisper:
     progre-so

  justi-cia

  progre-so

  justi-cia

I have many friends and thirty thousand

Warrior angels to watch

Over my exiled skin.

Look what occupies the four chambers of my heart:

re/vo/lu/ción

You will know me by this.

I am the daughter that never forgets.

Used by permission.

From The Strange House Testifies (Bilingual Review Press, 2013)   

Ruth Irupé Sanabria earned her MFA in Poetry from NYU. Her first full-length collection of poems, The Strange House Testifies (Bilingual Press), won 2nd place (Poetry) in the 2010 Annual Latino Book Awards. Her second full-length collection of poems is the 2014 recipient of the Letras Latinas/Red Hen Press Awards and will be published in 2017. Her poems have appeared in anthologies such as Women Writing Resistance, Poets Against the War, and U.S. Latino Literature Today. She has read her poetry in libraries, prisons, schools, parks, bars, and universities across the USA, Mexico, and Peru. Born in Argentina, raised in Washington D.C., she now works as a high school English teacher and lives with her husband and three children in Perth Amboy, N.J.

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