Lorna Dee Cervantes Poems

Lorna Dee Cervantes is a major Chilean poet. Her writing explores culture, gender, and economics. Her award-winning debut collection Emplumada solidified her reputation. It explores the world of Hispanic women and the roles they take in everyday life. Her next work was From the Cables of Genocide: Poems of Love and Hunger, published in 1992.

To My Brother

by Lorna Dee Cervantes

‘To My Brother’ by Lorna Dee Cervantes captures the intense bittersweetness of remembering a childhood checkered by both strife and happiness.

This is one of Lorna Dee Cervantes' more affecting poems, a rawly emotional imagination of her childhood pieced together in retrospect. Her uses of images are at once inspiring as they are disquieting in the ways they intimately illustrate the confusing tangle of feelings we can associate our pasts with (especially those with trauma).

and for the lumpen bourgeoisie

We were so poor.

The air was a quiver

of thoughts we drew from

Discover and learn about the greatest poetry, straight to your inbox

Start Your Perfect Poetry Journey

The Best-Kept Secrets of Poetry

Discover and learn about the greatest poetry ever straight to your inbox