I'm Adelimo, and this is The Slowdown.

I was asked recently why someone, anyone, should read poetry.

And my answer, though I'm sure it seemed a bit glib, was that I don't think anyone should

read poetry. I mean, if you hate poetry, have never come across a poem you like,

then you shouldn't read it. The same goes for music. If you hated music with your whole body,

I wouldn't tell you that you must listen to music. But I can and do make an argument

toward the fact that poetry can increase our connection to each other.

Does poetry have its issues? 100%. Does poetry have its limitations? 100%.

It's not going to cure disease or feed the hungry, but it might help us to understand

someone else's experience just a little better. Or maybe it'll make us mad, and then we'll have

to interrogate why we're mad, or implicate it, or why we feel left out.

Like many of the arts, poetry can be the way of recognizing our own beauty and our own flaws.

I remember once being at a poetry reading, and after someone read an incredible poem about the

horrors of colonization, they then went on to discuss the irony of writing a poem about colonization

in English. They went on to say that their two languages were Spanish and English, both the

language of colonizers. I love this moment because we were allowed to see the limitations of language

while still discussing it through language, still hearing the poem through language.

More and more, the possibilities of what a poem is are changing, the possibilities of what a book

is of what we can do on the page and off the page are expanding. The poem can recognize that the

person who writes it is also burdened by history's news. The poem can show us its limitations while

expanding past them at the same time. Today's poem by Trevino El Brings Plenty does just that.

It's a poem deeply rooted in the body. At the same time, it is very aware of the brutal history

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