I have been looking into schedules. Even when we read physics, we inquire of each least particle, What then shall I do this morning? How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives. What we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing. A schedule defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days. It is a scaffolding on which a worker can stand and labor with both hands at sections of time.
~Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.
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May 1, 2026: Yael Valencia Aldana
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Yael Valencia Aldana was born on the Caribbean island of Trinidad and Tobago, grew up on the neighboring island of Barbados, and moved to Brooklyn as a teenager. Adopted as a child, at age forty-four, she took a DNA test and discovered her maternal line: Indigenous, origin Colombia. As she tried to find her grandmother, she began writing poems again. Four years later, she entered an MFA program, and at the age of fifty-four, her debut collection, Black Mestiza, was published as part of the University Press of Kentucky New Poetry & Prose Series. The first poem in the book, “Talisman” declares “Ancestors…means nothing is lost.”
And then the speaker confirms that yes,
We are all in here together
xxxdistilled into this one casing of corpuscles.
I love this collection, the way it explores who we are and how we got that way. I also love the cover art. When I asked about it, I was thrilled to discover that Yael herself is the artist. The title of the painting is “Open Your Mouth,” and there’s a poem of the same name in the book. But this beautiful painting came first—before the words.
There’s so much truth in the painting, so much “I am a Caribbean Afro-Latinx/e woman with Indigenous, Black, and white roots,” and when I turn to the third poem in the first section, Yael’s description allows me to see this place where the wild women live, these women who “know how to stand in more / than one place in time.”
there is a slip of land on la frontera
a land of haunted untamed tongues
forked and black like the dark.
a land of wild women with smoke cloud
hair and legs that span rivers.
they know how to stand in more
than one place at one time.
In “Why Don’t You Write About Joy,” we read
Because you cannot hear me
doesn’t mean I am not singing.
But throughout this collection, we hear the singing.
And we see the “Black Person Head Bob.” This poem, which won a Pulitzer Prize, takes the reader inside. The opening line says so much, you almost don’t need anything else.
I still count. How many of us are in here?
The head bob returns in the third section of the book, in “The F Train 1999.” The speaker is running, running, and then
A wheat colored Timberland boot
pierces the silver line
of the closing doors.
I sail through steel toe cracked air
A head bob the only thanks needed.
That boot, the way it stops time. I can see it. And then the speaker leaps. Like a flying fish.
“I am small dark and moving,” the line and the image, carry us through all four sections of the collection, the first and last, my favorites.
In the last section, the speaker turns her eyes toward her mother, always moving, “iron-forged,” who dies and is buried, and then she turns toward her son “who looks just like his Granny.” And in this way the last section moves us from the past into the future. While always in the present. My favorite poem of this section is the second one, “Titan.”
You couldn’t know that when dealing
with the Titan that you become one yourself.
Yael earned a Master’s degree in Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies from Florida Atlantic University (FAU) and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Florida International University (FIU). Her work has appeared in Torch Literary Arts, Cutbank Literary Journal, Obsidian, and Nelle Journal. Her work has also been featured in Poets & Writers, Ms. Magazine, AWP’s The Writer’s Chronicle, Hip Latina, and The National Latino Book Club. She is the Managing Editor at Purple Ink Press and a member of Aunt Lute Press board. She was named a Poets & Writers “5 over 50” for 2025. She lives in Florida.
Come back on MAY 1st to read how YAEL VALENCIA ALDANA spends her days.