Tanya M. Beltran
Tanya M. Beltran is a Bronx-based poet known for performing and curating spoken-word poems for specialized events throughout New York City. She received her MAW in Poetry and her MFA in Fiction from Manhattanville College, where she served as the Editor-in-chief of the program’s literary journal, Inkwell. Her BA in English and Creative Writing is from Binghamton University.
In 2019, Beltran was awarded the Leon Levy Biography and Memoir Assistantship at The Graduate Center (CUNY) and in 2017 she became a VONA at UPenn Fiction alumna. Her poetry can be found in First Literary Review—East, great weather for MEDIA, nwu.org and within the Brevitas Anthologies 16, 17 and 18. When not writing, Beltran works as a Regulatory Publisher for the Biotechnical industry.
1st Haiku
is less really more,
when i have so much to say?
it can’t hurt to try.
The Curse of Writer’s Block
i’m uneasy
fearing words will never return
yet eerily
they are always there
lurking--
slithering their way onto walls
crawling into dreams
sneaking into reflections
shadows
of words unused
haunt me
because i ignored their cry to exist
Headlock: (the writer's battle w/ submitting)
my prose is choking,
gasping for air,
locked between biceps
and a freshly shaven pit.
the side of my right breast
pushes up against its words;
the ripples in my rib cage
squeezes life from its verbs.
my prose looks up at me,
exhausted from the tussling,
begging to be freed.
how novel is a life,
if the writer inside me dies?
Writing About The Dead
i care, that my words
will somehow affect any remnant,
any particle, any speck of dust that
still belongs to you.
therefore i sit, beneath
a weeping willow,
closing my eyes
awaiting a sign,
that although gone
you may still approve.
suddenly—a cloud, a breeze, and then a
songbird sings. “at last,” i begin to read
chapter 2, right on cue.
Lost in Space
her prolonged silence travels
as confusingly as the speed of light,
radiating through the cosmos, leaving
me wondering if whether her interest
remains, or has ultimately faded eons
ago? this journey through unused time—
is so daunting. yet here i am, venturing
off, towards a projected warmth farther in
the distance, where an illuminating path
possibly directs me to a bitterly cold end,
with no destination.
In The Rain
in the rain
the whiff of wet concrete reminds your city soul
that beneath the cement grass still grows
that roots to trees planted in central park
stretch their way to the norwood part of the bronx
it may not be true,
but beneath the fifty year-old chewed up gum
now as black as tar, beneath the imprints of
steel toed boots, and air force ones, beneath
the dog shit, the litter, the carelessness, and critters
nature takes her course,
adjacent to the tenants and tourists sharing the rigid
molded streets, roots break free from the manmade
restrictions—somehow
Going to Fix a Flat in 1992
between a big red commercial and bob barker, the sigh of my father’s
failure in combing my hair signals that my tire is ready to be fixed.
we speak of nothing in silence as our 6-mile hike begins on kingsbridge.
plop, plop, plop: my deflated wheel adds to the constant sounds, of
honking lincoln town cabs, hissing buses and the vulgar language
of pedestrians entering and exiting the roaring 4 train from above our
heads. halfway through the trek we pass yankee stadium, then we gear
left and for some reason the crowd goes wild. our mission continues—
to my father’s surprise: the hunts point bike-shop is out of business.
to my delight: the candy-shop is not. we turn around to head back home.
another 6-mile walk begins. i spit out one cent gum made in china like
tobacco going out of style: flavorless after a few chews. a plastic bag happily
swings from the handlebars, i dig-in then shove countless pieces into my mouth.
plop, plop, plop. there was only one care in the world: who won plinko?
