You were in the kitchen
and I was upstairs
I could hear you clanging
mixing and sizzling
opening and closing
the fridge, but
what made me
the happiest girl
were the garlic and onions
wafting up the staircase
promising dinner
to my nose
who promptly whispered it
to my stomach
as I finished my homework
on the old Smith Corona
you bought me
at a yard sale
for two dollars
all of which
made me feel
incredibly warm and loved.
Mom & I
Lupita Eyde-Tucker is a bilingual poet and translator raised in New Jersey and Guayaquil, Ecuador. She is an MFA candidate at the University of Florida, and the winner of the 2021 Unbound Book Festival Emerging Poet Award. Lupita also won the 2019 Betty Gabehart Prize, and in 2018 was selected as an AWP Writer to Writer Mentee by poet Maggie Smith. In 2020 her poems were finalists in the Sewanee Review Poetry Contest, Loraine Williams Poetry Prize, River Heron Review Poetry Prize, and her chapbook manuscript was a finalist in the Black River Chapbook Competition, Frontier Poetry's Chapbook Contest, and Gloria Anzaldúa Prize. 