somewhere, over the rainbow

Rodolfo Avelar

COUNTERCLOCK Emerging Writer’s Awards – 1st Place, Poetry

You see, there’s something that happens to a child of the soil
when she leaves her soil. It’s a death, then a painful rebirth...

— Nnedi Okorafor

 
 
 
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s l a m m m.

Rodolfo Avelar

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Writer’s Notebook

This poem [“somewhere, over the rainbow”] sprung forward as an urge to honor moving away for the first time as a queer person. I just started an MFA in poetry at UC Riverside. Suddenly, I found myself outside of the environment that had been so debilitating and limiting for so long, but instead of instantly flourishing and everything falling into place, I kind of fell deeper into dysphoria and crisis. I wrote it in the middle of the pandemic, kind of all at once. I’d been reading so much and felt like I was grasping at lines from poets I admired to tell me who I was. Finally I wrote this poem, which includes so many of those lines, as a way to create myself again. I love this poem, too, because of how large and, at points, too large it feels. I love a poem that feels like a mass. Sometimes, the best way for me to get to the truth in a poem is to make it hard to arrive at. I want to thank the writers who appear in this poem, for paving the way forward and giving me words to cling to: Nnedi Okorafor, Erika L. Sánchez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Karen O, Ada Limón, and Anthony Cody. I also want to say thank you to Raena Shirali and the COUNTERCLOCK editors for believing in my work. Abrazos!!!

 

Judge’s Notes

“This serial poem investigates the (re)creation of the queer self, reappropriating and turning labels over & over in its mouth. But beyond that, “somewhere, over the rainbow” imagines a creation myth tethered to well-known cultural references, while also inventing a psychic space of its own; each of the seven sections represents a day of creation (a familiar Biblical reference), but here we also encounter JOTXLAND, the author’s name for the psychic realm of queerness and self-acceptance (and which draws from the Latinx cultural lexicon). Written in all lower-case, the poem enacts doubt, fear, even self-erasure in its use of caesura and references to living Latinx authors. This poem truly contributes to the queer, BIPOC archive, and its nature as an ars poetica heightens the speaker’s already-poignant journey: ‘i think i’m okay / with settling here / under the pink sky / me and my memories / me and everything / me and everyone / who said, hermanx, it’s okay, no te quedes / go and write poems.’ Tonally sharp & incisive, this voice is one to watch, & listen to, closely.” – Raena Shirali, 2021 Poetry Judge

 

about the writer

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Rodolfo Avelar is a poet and artist from Fresno, CA. They hold a Bachelor of Arts from Fresno State, where they studied English Literature and Creative Writing. Their poetry projects queer people of color into science fiction, the future, outer space, and queer liberation. They are currently pursuing an MFA in Poetry from UC Riverside, as they write their first collection of poetry. In 2019, they were awarded a summer internship at Milkweed Editions, in which they designed and edited book length poetry manuscripts. This work cemented their goal to work in editing to dismantle barriers of entry for queer poets of color by creating opportunities for, giving life to, and caring for them and their work. They hope to publish, edit, & teach poetry, perfect their desk set-up, and play some video games along the way.