Offals
The flavours of home are off-putting.
Offals, glands, chitterlings;
this last one, we call chinchulínes, my favourite.
I always liked the name, the word’s aftertaste greasy
like a swallow flying to better places
leaving the ovenbird behind to build its chambered nest.
Between its mud and twigs
abuelo’s hands, dry with dust and cracked by the sun, invade
to toast bread for his famous choripán.
Like every year, we make sure to argue about politics
los tíos bust out zambas on the guitar
and I stuff my mouth to avoid the inevitable singalong.
We don’t drink fernet,
but even my full wine glass slowly turns to acid on the table;
it would weigh my wings down tomorrow.
We spend the twenty-fifth of the last month
in seats E23-26, mouths dry and sour, shivering.
The flight attendants wear Santa hats and butcher Feliz Navidad.
Their words fit neat and tidy around my tongue,
but I’d rather stumble over zambas
than sing along with strangers.
Sofía Masondo is a poet and theatre-maker of Argentine heritage based in London. Her work often explores themes of connection and disconnection between people, place and culture, taking inspiration across different art forms and from an intercultural upbringing. Her poetry has previously been published by South Bank Poetry and featured in the Wildfire Words New Voices Anthology. She is currently undertaking her Bachelor’s degree at University College London with focuses on anthropology, archives and Latin American literature.
Sofía will be with us from July through October 2024. To find out how to submit poetry prose, word & image, filmpoems and reviews to her please check out our submissions page here.
IS&T internships run for 4 months each consecutively, and in order to go some way towards redressing the balance in publishing, will for the foreseeable future come from the Black, Asian, Latinx and others from the global majority (ethnic minority in the UK). More details are below.