Our Second Pushcart Pick

We at LAR are pleased to give our first Pushcart nomination in poetry to Xochitl-Julisa Bermejo for her poem “Photograph of a Secret.” Bermejo, a native Angelino poet with an MFA from Antioch University, Los Angeles, represents just how vibrant a literary culture the West Coast has to offer.

In “Photograph of a Secret,” Bermejo accomplishes something very difficult–she guides us through the countless interpretations of a single photograph’s contents. Ekphrastic poetry may be the most difficult type of verse to make work. All too often, the poem is attenuated by reliance on the artifact it takes as a subject, or is merely a pale description without story or identifiable purpose.

But what Bermejo accomplishes so beautifully in her poem is not only to describe the scene in a photograph, but to guide us through a number of small narratives and voices, each with a political, visceral or emotional resonance of its own, each as plausible a rendition of the image as the next.

Not only do we find Bermejo a fine writer, but we also appreciate her sense of literary citizenship, as she donates her time and talents in teaching creative writing to the women of the Metropolitan Detention Center in downtown LA. We look forward to more work from this up-and-coming poet who has both craftsmanship and heart.