Hybrid: Four collages by Michelle Peñaloza

I've come to collage much in the same way I began with poetry: a wound, a need to make as a means to process, to do something with myself. My heart, my hands.

I started making collages the day after an ultrasound, the day after I learned my pregnancy was no longer viable.

Collage, like poetry, is a way to collapse time and space. Collage can be a portal, an altar, a way to visualize and make possible the impossible. A way to create new realities. My lola gave birth to twelve children (!) and had several miscarriages; she was pregnant for most of her life. Making these collages was a way for me to connect with her, honor her, and reimagine her.

She fed me Haw Flakes and SkyFlakes. She watched the Werther's Originals commercials in the 80's and learned what American grandparents gave to their grandchildren. These four pieces, "Haw Flake Lola," "Sky Flake Lola," "Lola Werthers" and "I Quit Lola" are part of a series based on a single image of my lola, one of the people who raised me, who cared for me while my parents worked full-time. These are for my lola with whom I learned English as we watched The Price is Right and The Young & The Restless together. "I Quit Lola," is one reality I imagine for her, one in which she could've left her responsibilities, boarded a plane to elsewhere and found adventure and ease I know she never knew in this life.

Haw Flake Lola

Image Description: Collage of magenta Haw Flake labels define a female silhouette against a background of gold wrappers

Skyflake Lola

Image description: Collage of a triangle of three female silhouettes against a background of silver Sky Flake wrappers; rays of red, yellow, and blue embroidery surround one silhouette, red flowers surround another silhouette, and woven magazine clippings fill the third silhouette.

Lola Werthers

Image description: Collage of brown and gold Werther’s Originals wrappers define a female silhouette

I Quit Lola

Image description: Collage of a black and white image of a young brown woman; she holds a small hand bag and looks directly into the camera. To her left is a magnified image of tree berries, cut to resemble red balloons. To her right: cutout of a modern blue suitcase topped with a small, handwritten sign that reads “I Quit.”

Photo credit: Gritchelle Fallesgon

About Michelle Peñaloza

Michelle Peñaloza is the author of Former Possessions of the Spanish Empire, winner of the 2018 Hillary Gravendyk National Poetry Prize (Inlandia Books, 2019) and landscape/heartbreak (Two Sylvias, 2015). A Kundiman fellow, Michelle has also received support from the Barbara Demming Memorial Fund, Loghaven, Caldera, Literary Arts, VONA/Voices, and the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, among others. You can find her recently published and forthcoming poems in Poetry, Indiana Review, Bellingham Review and Poetry Northwest. The proud daughter of Filipino immigrants, Michelle was born in the suburbs of Detroit and raised in Nashville. She lives in rural Northern California where she farms, writes, teaches, and has begun creating visual art.