Emerging BIWOC Poet Spotlight: Sara Daniele Rivera
This monthly series features poems by women of color in the early stages of their publishing careers. It is our intention to create more space at Perugia for the work of poets who are Black, Indigenous, and women of color (BIWOC). We hope using our platform to highlight this work will expand the readership of the poets we spotlight. This series aligns with Perugia’s mission to celebrate and support emerging women poets, inclusive of gender-expansive identities; featured poems will be from poets with no more than one published full-length collection. We’d love to hear from readers with suggestions for poems & poets to feature.
August 2024 Poet: Sara Daniele Rivera
Poem for a Scorpion Child
Begin: a memory from before you can remember
much, the kind recounted to you so often
you've constructed it for yourself.
A woman came to the door. You watched
behind your father's legs. She wanted to sell
your house and you cried until she left.
Admit it: you were the child who cried too much. You
lacked a layer. You wanted to be a scorpion
but you weren't a scorpion.
You were whatever an exoskeleton protects.
Soft interiors.
Source
The Blue Mimes, Graywolf Press, 2024 (first published in spoke 4)
Poet Bio
Sara Daniele Rivera is a Cuban Peruvian American artist, writer, translator, and educator. Her writing has appeared in The BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNext, Solstice, Waxwing, Speculative Fiction for Dreamers: A Latinx Anthology, and elsewhere. She was the recipient of a 2017 St. Botolph Club Emerging Artist Award, the winner of the 2018 Stephen Dunn Prize in Poetry (Solstice Magazine), and a 2022 Tin House resident. She is a co-translator of The Blinding Star: Selected Poems by Blanca Varela (Tolsun Books, 2021) and co-editor of Not Your Papi’s Utopia: Latinx Visions of Radical Hope (Mouthfeel Press, 2025). Her debut book of poetry, The Blue Mimes (Graywolf Press, 2024), won the 2023 Academy of American Poets First Book Award. She lives in Albuquerque, New Mexico.