Poetry

Leslie Sainz is a first-generation Cuban American, born and raised in Miami. A CantoMundo Fellow, she received an undergraduate degree from Carnegie Mellon University and an MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Sainz was a writer in residence at the Hub City Writers Project and served as a Stadler Fellow at Bucknell University in 2018–2019.

Orisha Poems

by Leslie Sainz


Sonnet for Yemaya

    Orisha of the living ocean, and the divine feminine

Mother, I am not married but I give,
am giving, fullness. Am conjuring.
Egret in flight. Scent of powder, sea foam.
The cowry shells speak but not of their past;
first abandonment, a turning over.
Then, snail exposed to air, all cruelties.
Mother, help me not fear comparison.
So much depends on this globe you’ve painted
brown, soil of the trout lily, body
in diapause. In your sea of nature
and harmony,
I want to live. Be live
as commodity, the satchel of stones
I leave in the corners I make holy.
Only the act of making is assured.

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