Under The Sun

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Lorelei Ramirez

Lorelei Ramirez was the winner in the College category of Under the Sun‘s unpublished writers competition.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.