Poetry Reading: RACE, by Paula Maria Rodriguez

Performed by Val Cole

POEM:

I was, maybe, three
years old, when my mother
said: “I challenge you to run
from here to the corner.”

And, delighted, I ran.

On my spring stick new legs,
I ran,
giving it my all,
I ran,
alongside the old stone building,

While holding my mother’s hand
and I felt the wind
in my hair,
and that delicious,
palatable,
infinite
sense of freedom
for the first time.

It was 1974
and the country was on the verge
of shaking the shackles
of a fifty year-old dictatorship.
shots resonated against the darkness
and the first morning lights
unveiled the corpses of
insurrectors,
lying,
their eyes wide
with surprise,
by the roadside.

But that day,
I ran.