from BEAST MERIDIAN, by Vanessa Angélica Villarreal

Vanessa Angélica Villarreal is a poet, essayist, and artist born in the borderlands in McAllen, Texas. Her poems have appeared in PBS Newshour, Waxwing, Caketrain, DIAGRAM, DREGINALD, The Feminist Wire, The Western Humanities Review, The Poetry Foundation Harriet Blog, and elsewhere. Most recently, she has served as an editor for the Bettering American Poetry project. She is a CantoMundo Fellow and her book, BEAST MERIDIAN, is forthcoming from Noemi Press in early 2017. She currently eats tacos in Los Angeles, CA but her forever hometown is Houston, Texas.