of the way your tiered skirt
twirls out just so,
a merry-go-round of dizzy
girlish infatuations with
a calliope soundtrack
of how there is nothing
more lovifying than when
we put our heads together
eyeball to eyeball
butterfly kisses right before naptime
of your stomping feet
leaving a wake of boots,
shoes, sandals, dirt,
some stickers from the yard
and the trail of pine straw that
betrays your comings and goings
of your pushing the bed time
stalling with questions and stories
begging me for a song of blessing
which I always deliver
despite the contraband of books
and flashlights I always discover
of all these things, and hopefully more
your lives intertwined with mine,
filling this cup overflowingly,
then emptying it out again
I will write.
Speeding by
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award, the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2022 she was a finalist for the Andrés Montoya Prize from Letras Latinas. Lupita is completing an MFA in Creative Writing - Poetry at the University of Florida, and will be a staff scholar at Bread Loaf Translators Conference in June 2023. 
Not Enough Poetry 
Lupita, do you love this girl to pieces or what? So many reminders of my Riley when she was little, especially bedtime and discovering the flashlight and book (usually Japanese manga books!) under her bed. Changing her sheets and pretending not to notice the journal hidden under the mattress… oh, what joy daughters bring. Thanks so much for your potent comment on my abuse poem. Your work here is kind of the antidote for my work! Loved this. Amy
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Amy, yes, I do! Thanks for stopping by and for your encouragement. I hope to be able to do the same for you!
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so sweet… ~ M
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