Eulogy for Super Pancho from the Land of Maíz Illustration by Víctor Ochoa Crowned with a black sombrero, a halo of dust trails behind Súper Pancho from the Land of Maíz as his tan steel-toe work boots touch the ground. Súper Pancho’s tamale arms and legs don’t hide from the scorching sun to sell diamond-faced […]
Sonia Gutiérrez
Sonia Gutiérrez is a poet, professor, and translator. Her poems have appeared in Poetry of Resistance: Voices for Social Change, edited by Francisco X. Alarcón and Odilia Galván Rodríguez (Best Poetry Book for the 2016 Arizona-New Mexico Book Awards), La Jornada Semanal (México City), and Tres en Suma (Madrid). Her fiction has appeared in the London Journal of Fiction and Huizache. Sonia’s bilingual poetry collection, Spider Woman / La Mujer Araña, is her debut publication. In 2015, Veronica Gianello completed her Master’s Thesis, "Translating Mestizaje into Italian: Sonia Gutiérrez’s Writing and the Importance of Transnational Cooperation in Today’s Borderlands," at the Università di Trento. And Giovanna Zortea, completed her graduation thesis, "Self-translation and Translation: Sonia Gutiérrez's Case Study," with honors at the Università di Trieste.
Currently, Sonia Gutiérrez is a contributing editor for The Writer’s Response (Cengage Learning, 2016). She is moderating Facebook’s Poets Responding, submitting "Legacy / Herencia" for publication, working on her manuscript, "Sana Sana Colita de Rana," and completing her novel, "Kissing Dreams from a Distance." Her bilingual poem, “Eulogy to Súper Pancho from the Land of Maíz” / “Elogio a Súper Pancho de la Tierra del Maíz,” and Francisco J. Bustos’s Spanglish translation, “Eulogy for Súper Pancho from La Tierra del Maíz,” appears in her manuscript, "Legacy / Herencia."
Eulogy for Súper Pancho from the Land of Maíz
Locked Up in the Mind and Other Vignettes
She lost him before she even knew it. Tía Alicia lost her son, cousin Beto, to the letters carved on his stomach, the size of freeway signs, announcing cities and streets from far away distances. With those drawings under his clothes and skin, he relived the beatings that echoed in his memory, like the lighter burning the melting brown rock on a spoon, easing the pain only he felt. Too much trippin’ locked primo Beto up in the mind, like the hamster that overfeeds itself and doesn’t know how to stop eating—and dies. But primo Beto didn’t die. He’s locked up in the mind and behind bars.
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