I am four years old and
my mission is to lick envelopes.
Mamãe scrawls letters
to the cable company for odds
to win a trip to Disney in America.
My tongue feels like a chainsaw
but the body can always
do more for a dream.
A man’s hand stretches
into the flock of 50,000 letters.
He extracts one with a flourish
and squeals Mamãe’s name—
our destiny sealed with my spit.
I am twenty-six years old and
I still seal envelopes for USCIS.
Caetano Veloso plays a show in Boston.
The venue becomes a bewitching
bubble of Brazil, booming with life—
mouths insatiable whirlpools for language,
hands feathering in the green yellow beams
of home. We step out into bitter April,
the night moonless. Mamãe and I wade
past brutal brick walls to our car. She chokes
out, throat bordered with barbed wire:
We should have never come here.
How did I ever believe in this country?
The eight hour flight changes
the shape of me. White and blue
stars plaster the hotel walls
like this place swallowed all
of the cosmos and spit out paint.
Everything is sweat and alligators,
the neon heat of Florida bursting
vessels in my nose every vermillion day.
Each gnashing night the sky shatters
into smears of light, roaring blasts
snatch tears from my eyes. Mamãe dreams:
Someday, we will live in all of this magic.
All of the blood, teeth, shimmer—
My god, all of the shimmer
—Leticia Priebe Rocha
Leticia Priebe Rocha (Website, Instagram) is the author of the chapbook In Lieu of Heartbreak, This is Like (Bottlecap Press, 2024) and was a contributor in Here to Stay: Poetry and Prose from the Undocumented Diaspora (Harper Perennial, 2024). Leticia earned her bachelor’s from Tufts University, where she was awarded the 2020 Academy of American Poets University & College Poetry Prize. Born in São Paulo, Brazil, she immigrated to Miami, FL at the age of 9 and currently resides in the Greater Boston area. Her work has been published or is forthcoming in the Driftwood Anthology, Salamander, Rattle, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 Undocupoets Fellow and her work has been supported by the Fine Arts Work Center, Mass Cultural Council, and Cambridge Arts. Leticia is also an Editorial Associate for Yellow Arrow Publishing. She teaches poetry workshops and loves the moon