K-Mart, San Antonio, Texas, 1986
By Sandra Cisneros
Welcome to SWWIM Every Day’s preview coverage of Miami Book Fair (MBF) 2022! The poets whose work you’ll be reading every weekday from October 15 through November 15 are just a few of the many authors from around the world participating in this year’s MBF, the nation’s largest gathering of writers and readers of all ages. They all look forward to sharing their work, thoughts, and ideas both in person and online. Between November 13-20, new poet conversations and readings will be launched and available for free on miamibookfaironline.com (in addition to other content). For more information, visit the website and follow MBF on Instagram and Twitter at @miamibookfair and use the hashtag #miamibookfair2022.
For Rubén When I can take you to the K-Mart on South Santa Rosa at sunset, and say, Meet me over by the flip-flops, I’ve got to get me some socks. When I can toss in the shopping cart my tampons next to your Tres Flores hair oil, my microwave popcorn, your pack of white tees, my San Martín de Porres three-day candle. When we have finished paying and can sit in the parking lot satisfied, you and I, with nachos and an Icee. Then we can marvel at a thousand black wings swooping against the downtown sky. Urracas urracando in the trembling trees.
Sandra Cisneros is a poet, short story writer, novelist, essayist, performer, and artist. Her numerous awards include NEA fellowships in both poetry and fiction, a MacArthur Fellowship, national and international book awards, including the PEN America Literary Award, and the National Medal of Arts. More recently, she received the Ford Foundation's Art of Change Fellowship, was recognized with the Fuller Award for Lifetime Achievement in Literature and won the PEN/Nabokov Award for Achievement in International Literature. In addition to her writing, Cisneros has fostered the careers of many aspiring and emerging writers through two nonprofits she founded: Macondo Writers and the Alfredo Cisneros del Moral Foundation. As a single woman she made the choice to have books instead of children. A citizen of both the United States and Mexico, Cisneros currently lives in San Miguel de Allende and makes her living by her pen.
Copyright © 2022 by Sandra Cisneros. From WOMAN WITHOUT SHAME, just published by Knopf in hardcover. All rights reserved.
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the ending just soars! The sacredness of the mundane and the wonder of nature, all the same life!