she says this is Patricio hi nice to meet ya
look check out my cool handshake
palm squeeze fist bump toe to toe
psss at the end and he’s got it
he gives her a rose
perfumed their eyes lock
i too want
elegance a suit a princess
shaving cream raze/her mir/her
i look to my left then my right
imitate mi papi
towel around his waist relaxed
what are you doing they yell outside
i hide i hide
i make like i’m swimming
in the sink wat/her
A body that is just beginning to define itself discovers the insufficiency of imposed language, and even though it rebels and implodes, the machinery it opposes is a shadow that extends itself, an inescapable question and—ultimately—a condemnation. In dear parent or guardian, the poet proposes a rupture with the agreement of gendered language through the transcription of memory, revealing the injustice of the norm. They who sprint freely in sweltering heat deserve to be a ninja turtle, nothing else.
Isadoro Saturno (Barquisimeto, Venezuela, 1987) is a poet, editor, and children’s book writer living in Atlanta. In 2018, he published his first children’s book Conejo y Conejo with Ediciones Ekaré, which won the Banco del Libro prize for Best Children and Young Adult book and in 2020 was translated into Chinese. His poems have appeared in various anthologies including PROVEA’s Poesía contra la opresión (1920–2018) and were awarded third place in the II Rafael Cadenas Young Poets Prize.
Isadoro Saturno’s writing deploys his singular identity in brief forms and constrictions where he atomizes the voice into a stinging and precise register. In dear parent or guardian this peculiarity is expressed in organic, germinal, and dysphoric language communicated through the lens of childhood. Isadoro, a children’s book author, poet, and translate, writes himself into the panorama of Latin American literature with this gem that succeeds in moving us anew with the possibility of the transmutation of poetic language.
Eleonora Requena
dear parent or guardian is a message in a bottle, one where Isadoro “from the past” shows us that other childhoods are possible: ones that resist the mandate of gender and find ways that save the child’s agency, creating a world that is more authentic, free, joyful. In this way, those children that reclaim their voices in adulthood can shed light on a society where the darkness of rigid norms, psycho-emotional violence, and adult-centric thinking diminish happiness and the echo of who we are, forcing us into “who we have to be.” Dear reader, childhood is to be accompanied, not judged. Dear reader, trans childhood exists. Dear, dear reader.
Frida Cartas
What can our child selves teach us about gender’s arbitrary rules? How did our smaller selves live fully in the face of institutions and family dynamics? In E.R. Pulgar’s translation of Isadoro Saturno’s estimado representante, they mirror a juicy fragmented poetics of play that glitches open a door between first and second puberties. Here, language is a game of expansion and transformation, of refusal and imagination. Pulgar splits open English until it merry-go-rounds into a vast playground of sound. As someone who’s been skeptical of a principal’s authority since kindergarten, I am deeply grateful to be this world’s playmate.
Alexis Aceves García
They summon the greatest forces of poetry to make a music that captivates, ascends, and begins language anew.
Dorothea Lasky
Pulgar here has generously carved a place for us queers to set up camp.
Óscar Moisés Díaz
…blew me away in all the best possible ways.
Moira Egan
E.R. Pulgar is a Venezuelan American poet, journalist, and translator. They are the author of Sonnet to the Serpent and Other Poems (Wonder Press). Their criticism has appeared in Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Playboy, and elsewhere. Their poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Fence, Changes Review, Epiphany, blush lit, and the Poetry Project newsletter. A finalist for the seventh Rafael Cadenas Young Poets Prize, they curate the Endless Blue salon at the Bowery Poetry Club.
ISBN: 978-1-946604-06-4
Chapbook. 40 pp, 5.25 x 8.25 in
Publication Date: December 01 2023
Series: Señal #21