Lorelei Ramirez was the winner in the College category of Under the Sun‘s unpublished writers competition.
Flagler Street
by Lorelei Ramirez
This is what we’ve got
These
Palm trees
Swaying in the breeze along the
Not the sea or shining sands under the sun but
Swaying
In the middle of streets
Dark paved roads and honking horns and not quite so clean air
Between walking girls and whistling men in dirty white cars
Pickup trucks
And bus
stops.
This is what we’ve got
Here
Here in the heart of Miami
The heart that I know where the women aren’t at all model-esque
And the sun doesn’t always shine so
sweetly.
This is it
The palm trees swaying
In the middle of the at-times busy streets and dark
Cornered
Roads
and dirty buildings
Roaches as big as fingers and
the sun
is always
shining.
—–
Bio: Lorelei Ramirez was born in Queens, New York, to a Puerto Rican mother and a Peruvian father, and raised in Miami. She is on the verge of finishing her associate’s degree at Miami-Dade College and has also been accepted to the School of Visual Arts in New York, where she plans to pursue a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. Here in South Florida, she’s participated in art exhibitions as well as curated her own, and has preformed in school plays and student films.
Listen to an excerpt from Ramirez’s interview.
Funding for this episode provided by a grant from The Florida Humanities Council and the National Endowment for the Humanities.