Synkroniciti is stoked to welcome back poet and writer Eloísa Pérez-Lozano of Houston with two poems exploring society’s expectations of women and how small gestures: taking down tables or riding a bike, can be both challenge and opportunity for establishing agency and selfhood.
“A Run-In with Machismo at the Church Breakfast Taco Sale” reminds us that some of the criticism and scrutiny women face comes from women, sometimes even elders in our community. After an event at church, Eloísa looks for a way to help clean up and notices that the tables need to be put away. The task resists her at first, but she learns quickly, and it is exhilarating.
“I pull back, thinking of how else to/ execute this action when I remember/ that as a woman, my strength is in/ my hips, my thighs, my legs.// This time when my arms push down/ my right hip plummets, its unparalleled power/ forcing the surface to buckle and fall/ bowing to my commanding curves.// That’s when I hear it/ the older woman’s voice/ the strength and stubbornness/ of her years cutting the air…”
The narrative is powerfully shaped beautifully crafted, showing the cultural dance Eloísa must perform: showing respect to her elders, fundamental in Mexican American culture, while asserting her capability and agency.
“Riding Through the Rage,” one of our Expectations poetry contest finalists, tells the story of Urooj Bisma, a twelve-year-old Pakistani girl who rides a bicycle, despite the disapproving male gaze turned on her.
“They are enraged at her/ daring to ride for fun, for herself/ instead of a duty to fulfill.// Indignant at her wanting to exist/ in the world outside the home/ where they think she belongs.”
Eloísa renders the danger and the thrill with cinematic clarity—the wind tugging at Urooj’s headscarf, the sun catching her spokes, the world opening beneath her wheels. In claiming motion, she claims existence. The poem becomes a call to women everywhere: to be bold in the ways that are ours, to ride, literally or metaphorically, through whatever rage seeks to contain us.
Read Eloísa’s passionate and powerful poetry in Synkroniciti’s Expectations, Vol. 8, No. 2, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
Eloísa Pérez-Lozano (she/her) writes poems, essays and flash fiction about Mexican-American identity, women’s issues, and motherhood. She graduated from Iowa State University with a B.S. in psychology and an M.S. in journalism and mass communications. A Best of the Net-nominated writer, her work has been featured in The Texas Observer, Houston Chronicle, Houston Public Media, and MUTHA Magazine, among others. She enjoys singing, dancing and traveling, and she is a self-proclaimed Friends and Disney fiend. She lives with her family in Houston, Texas.