GRANTS,NM—Imagine how you might feel if you checked a book out of the library, you went home, sat down in your favorite comfortable chair, and prepared to delve into your new book. When you opened it there was a letter inside. Not just any letter, but a letter to you from someone you had never met, and probably never will.
Would you be intrigued, excited, inspired to leave a letter of your own for the next reader? Would you keep it?
Jenna Chavez has just such a creative and mischievous intellect. She leaves such letters for others. Chavez is only 13, and in the 8th grade at Los Alamitos Middle School.
March was National Poetry Month. The New Mexico Department of Cultural Affairs held an Ekphrastic statewide poetry contest to honor the occasion. Chavez won Honorable Mention in the Youth Category for her poem “A Million Little Tears”.
She may be young, but Chavez is serious about her self-expression. Among her earliest memories of being with other poets is of an open poetry event, when she was in the 3rd grade. “Everyone wore black and snapped their fingers.” The poet has been seriously writing since she was in the 4th grade. Since she has been in middle school she has mostly been journaling and reading. Her writing projects include fiction. Her mini book, written about her experiences during COVID, has yet to be published, but she is considering self-publishing.
But she is most proud of her Ekphrastic poem, “A Million Little Tears.” This is her first contest, and in the poem, which is about the Higgins painting, “A guy is looking at the painting as if he is in it, and in the end, he returns to reality.”
Some of us might relate to that guy, a person with passions and occasional moods of escapism.
A fall of rain can change a place, I think as the droplets unify on my window.
The once mighty sky has a somber face, The bashful sun is approaching, she carries my shadow.
The vigorous ground is blessed with showers, The overcast is left without the rain, forlorn are the clouds.
The glistening tears decorate the sagebrush and desert flowers, Oh how the heavens can weep so loud. But through the haze the pastels approached, The arched hue is its
own prize, Reminds one of flowers before they are poached, The array of colors wipe one's eyes. And to the sobbing she wishes goodbye, The people gather, what a joyous acquainting!
Though this museum dries my tears, I'm a lonely guy, And this is just a painting.
There was an Ekphrastic Poetry Reading by the contest winners, on Sunday, May 19th , at the National Hispanic Cultural Center in Albuquerque, but Chavez did not attend.
“I would be uncomfortable in a new environment. I like to transition into things. She said that she enjoyed reading her poem over the school intercom to her classmates, in a familiar environment.
The poet, who will be attending Grants High School in the fall, wants to continue her own writing projects outside of her classes. Does she see writing in her future?
“To be an author would be cool,” she responded. “I see a lot of things you wouldn’t see in real life, in my dreams,” and she began to reveal a little about her creative senses. One of her dream-characters is Posie, who has no stomach. Another is Arachne, a girl clown without hair or ears and wearing a big party hat. “I write about these in my journal, and I draw them and put them on my wall.”