We came in dancing. Landed moving. Our bodies pressedagainst borders, north and south, to the limits of cold and heat.Seeped through and found ourselves on both sides, multiple.We danced as defense. Danced to new songs. To familiarwhispers, to the music we brought and the music we fed. Wecame with photos and adrenaline, taped up boxes and giantsuitcases. America, to me, in 1979 was a pyrotechnic albumof bursting events, and relatives known only by nicknamesopened their mouths the way cats do to sense kin. The archive isin our bodies, in the hormones coursing through kids, in theindestructibility of our storytellers. I learned to trust thecortisol smell on my people, and the food my abuelaalways had in her purse. Improvisationally, we landed.We have felt our way through, we make our way back.
trust
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“Trust” from EN EL NORTE/SOY DEL SUR: by José Felipe Alvergue.
Published by Omnidawn on June 5, 2026.
Copyright © 2026 by José Felipe Alvergue.
All rights reserved.
Reproduced by Poetry Daily with permission.
José Felipe Alvergue is the author of gist : rift : drift : bloom (2015), precis (2017), and scenery (2020), which won Fordham University Press’s Poets Out Loud Editor’s Prize. He is also the author of purplish: poetry anger publics (2025), an auto-theoretical reflection on politics and the record of human emotions archived in poetry, and en el norte/soy del sur (2026), a collection of sonnet essays reflecting on diaspora and wellbeing. He is a graduate of both the CalArts Writing and Buffalo Poetics programs, grew up on the Mexico-US border in South San Diego, and is a proud member of the Salvadoran diaspora. José can be found exploring America by bicycle, meeting people, listening to their stories, and stopping to play with animals. The only cult he will ever belong to is his family, who can be heard for miles singing songs and making all manner of noise.
José Felipe Alvergue’s en el norte/soy del sur, which translates to “in the north I am of the south,” is an exploration into the limits of the American sonnet, one that seeks to establish a stable sense of place, while opening vistas at each turn. Stitching together multiple sonnets into what he calls “sonnet essays,” Alvergue rides their turns—or “voltas”—that are guided by memories and photographs of his family’s migratory history between El Salvador and the United States.
“'I fear I can’t make/ myself small/ enough' writes José Felipe Alvergue in his haunting poetry collection, en el norte /soy del sur. This postnational, postmemory work traces the capillaries of generational trauma, how survival embeds itself into life’s tissues and choreography. For one Salvadoran family, migration to the United States morphs from hope to the realization that 'the world is an emergency.' However, even among so much tragedy, there is always dancing and other miracles that refuse to be extinguished. en el norte soy del sur is a collection I will revisit again and again."
—Gustavo Barahona-López, author of Foundation
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