Piso, Paso, Pena (Floor, Step, Grief), 2024.
Gouache cut paper. Purchase
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Art by Emily Schroeder Willis
Poem by Angelica Flores
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My Second Home
On October 25, 2023, Hurricane Otis, a category 5 hurricane, hit the city of Acapulco. Hurricane Otis is the most catastrophic hurricane that Acapulco has experienced since Hurricane Pauline in 1997.
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My second home is Acapulco,
the city where my mother grew up.
My second home is someone else’s first
and only home.
It is the home of people who lost everything
except their faith in God.
It is the home of people who serve tourists,
the ones the news focused on
during the first days after the hurricane,
neglecting the colonias.
It’s the home of stray dogs and cats who used
to roam the beaches. We will never
know the exact death toll of these creatures.
My second home is where an honorable captain
from Puebla and his fellow crew members went down with the docked recreation yacht they worked for.
It’s where they said only 27 deaths then 37, and then 48
when there is likely more than one hundred deaths
at the very least.
It’s where family members are still
searching for their loved ones
who worked as fishermen,
fearing the worst.
It is not the home of authority figures who visit
only to get mud on their boots and call it a day.
So much disrespect for people who were fatally carried
away by mudslides hours before.
But after all, my second home has a coat of arms
with two hands clearing away reeds
the hands of its citizens who have no choice
but to start anew.
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Angelica Flores is a Mexican-American writer. You can find her book reviews in Newcity’s magazine and website. She created the Southwest Nest series for the online publication, Sixty Inches From Center. She also has a blog called the Macaron Raccoon (@themacaronraccoon on Instagram) and she is the mother of two guinea pigs, Kofi and Kabob.
Emily Schroeder Willis | An artist and Associate Professor, Adjunct at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Emily received her BFA from the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities and her MFA from the University of Colorado, Boulder. She has exhibited her work at the Dubai Design Fair in the UAE, the Kansas City Museum in Missouri, the Ohio Craft Museum in Wooster, the Ralph Arnold Gallery in Chicago, and many others. She is the recipient of a Jerome Fellowship from the Northern Clay Center and the Sage Fellowship from the Archie Bray Foundation. She has been an artist-in-residence at the Archie Bray Foundation, the Zentrum für Keramik in Berlin, Germany, the Alberta University of the Arts in Canada and Watershed Center for the Ceramic Arts in Maine.
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