-after Franz Kafka
and every day
I teach kindergarten
pick up my son from basketball practice
face a sink full of dirty dishes
How to describe the normality
and how to survive it
The United States killed
180 children and teachers
at the Shajareh Tayyebeh girls’ elementary school
in southern Iran
Watch Bridgerton in the afternoon
Angelina Sáenz (she/her/ella) is a Los Angeles–based Chicana writer, poet, and award-winning educator. She is a UCLA Writing Project Fellow, an alumna of the VONA/Voices Workshop for Writers of Color, and a Macondo Writers Workshop Fellow. She is the author of the poetry collections Maestra (FlowerSong Press, 2024) and Edgecliff (FlowerSong Press, 2021), as well as the children’s book Waiting for Luna.
Sáenz is a featured poet and contributor to Escaramuza, a collaborative poetry and photography coffee-table book exploring the poetics of home, published by GOST Books (2025). Her poetry has appeared in Diálogo, Split This Rock, Hostos Review, Out of Anonymity, Angels Flight Literary West, Every Other, Cockpit Revue Paris, The Acentos Review and the multi-genre anthology Somos Xicanas. She was featured in a Poetry Folio in Poetry Magazine, published by the Poetry Foundation (April 2025).