Alan Pelaez Lopez

cantfindit

Alan Pelaez Lopez (?-present) is an Afro-Indigenous poet and artist from Oaxaca, Mexico. Their work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net Award, and has been published in POETRY Magazine, Everyday Feminism, Rewire News, and Splinter News among others. Currently, Pelaez Lopez is pursuing a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies at UC Berkeley. They are also the co-founder of the Arts and Humanities Initiative, an interdisciplinary think tank at UC Berkeley. Source

A Daily Prayer

God wears glow-in-the-dark acrylic nails, her favorite color is obsidian black,

             she’s lactose intolerant & is tired of femme exploitation.

 

God buys gold hoop earrings at Dollar Tree & ain’t afraid to wear eyelash extensions

             for two weeks straight even if the package reads “one-time use only.”

 

God says “hi” to everyone the moment she boards public transit & after she’s seated,

             she speaks loudly into her phone while munching on hot Cheetos.

 

God carries a plastic bag with quarters, pennies & her passport cuz she knows

             most of her followers ain’t [  ] & removal proceedings are always already a possibility.

 

God orders $1 fries, $1 cheeseburgers & $1 drinks at fast-food restaurants cuz

             a gurl needs to live & sometimes thriving looks like surviving.

 

God checks her eyebrows on her phone every two hours & licks her index finger

             to realign each hair particle before meeting up with da girls.

 

God walks into Metro PCS every three days for water damage services cuz she’s too often

             weeping onto her Android—M, Tu, W, Th, F, Sa, & Sun—the deaths of Black girls.

 

God has hired a personal stylist cuz she don’t know no more how to be simultaneously ready

             for a funeral, court hearing, birthday celebration, anniversary dinner & the club.

 

God has a Twitter account with 36 followers & it’s aiiight cuz she follows 794K folk & they

             all Black femmes & the 36 that follow her hold her so she can hold the rest of the world.

Published:

2020

Length:

Regular

Literary Movements:

Contemporary

Anthology Years:

2023

Themes:

Faith & Hope

Identity

Intersectionality & Culture

Womanhood

Literary Devices:

Allusion

an expression designed to call something to mind without mentioning it explicitly; an indirect or passing reference

Anaphora

a figure of speech in which words repeat at the beginning of successive clauses, phrases, or sentences

Couplets

two lines of verse, usually in the same meter and joined by rhyme, that form a unit

Extended Metaphor

a metaphor that extends through several lines or even an entire poem