I began my FRONTEXTOS project (frontexto is a blend of frontera and texto, border/text) on New Year’s Day of 2018. At first, it had to do with commitment. I made too many excuses for not writing: teaching too many classes, too many books to read, not enough time. On New Year’s, I wrote the first poem on a moleskin. It was in Spanish and I doodled around the text. I liked it. Kept the erasures. Next day I wrote another one. From there, I kept going. Since then, it has become a daily undertaking. A way of thinking.

Lyricism and brevity are at the core of these poems. Almost always the text and image correspond in some way. I have started using color/mixed media, which opens more possibilities.

I write them in Spanish because why not. I grew up speaking it. Then I was forced to suppress it when I crossed the border. It’s staying.