Just One Thing with Diannely Antigua

“This picture was taken on my 30th birthday when I was a guest on the podcast Say More with Olivia Gatwood and Melissa Lozada-Oliva.”

The magnificent Diannely Antigua is that rarest of creatures: a TWO-TIME contributor to SLM! We’re thrilled to have her back. Here she shares just one thing about her May issue poem “I’m Almost 30”:

“Ever since watching the movie 13 Going on 30, I’ve been obsessed with reaching thirty years old. I thought by thirty, I’d have my shit together. I thought by thirty, I’d have my dream job (I, too, dreamed of being a ‘big time magazine editor’). I thought by thirty, I’d be married. I thought by thirty, I’d have the curvaceous body of an ancient fertility goddess. But none of those things happened. On the eve of my thirtieth birthday,  I was still square-hipped, a starving artist/server at a restaurant, and very much single. But what my mirror, bank account, or dating profile couldn’t show me was the life I had lived. I’d survived those thirty years. Goddamnit I’ve survived.”

Don’t miss the two poems of Diannely’s that we published in 2016!