Click here for PDF.
Contributor Notes
“La Mera Neta,” is part of a new collection written in response to postmodern visual art and experimental poetry. Larissa Szporluk’s “Ladybirds” and her book Traffic With MacBeth helped steer my poetry in a new direction, from linear personal narratives toward surreal, image-based poetry that interrogates. In this poem, “La Mera Neta” responds to institutional violence with absurd imagery and scenes from our everyday lives. The works in the collection I'm developing also engage and re-imagine Chicana poetry aesthetics through image, notions of class, feminism, and representation. This poem is my abstract offering to dismantling worn out Chicano/Latino archetypes of the chola and the boogeyman, and moves away from fear and into power.
Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in Bell Gardens, a suburb of East Los Angeles. She is a VONA alumna is an MFA candidate at the University of California, Riverside. Her essays and poems are widely published, most recently in UCLA's Párrafo Magazine and with KCET's 710 Corridor Project. Her poetry collection, Swallows was released in 2013 by Finishing Line Press.
