Defiant Devotion, by Dolo Diaz

Poetry, chapbook, 20 pages, from Bottlecap Features. These poems thread memory, faith, and familial tension, moving fluidly between reverence and rebellion. They capture the absurdities and emotional truths of religious life, embracing its contradictions: the tenderness of childhood ritual, the weight of unspoken judgment, and the echo of formative beliefs. Dolo Diaz wrote this series in a single three-hour stretch, as if possessed by memory. Committing them to the page became a form of reckoning—and perhaps a way to offer poetic company to others on their own spiritual paths. Infused with humor, shame, longing, and defiance, the poems travel from childhood into adulthood. From the innocent tyranny of making a younger sister kneel to pray, to the compulsion of kissing a Sacred Heart plaster bust, to the irony of warning the priest not to mention Jesus at her church wedding, these pieces are both specific and universal. Defiant Devotion is a testament to the strange, enduring power of belief and the stories we carry long after belief itself has faded. Dolo Diaz is a poet and scientist whose work explores the intersection of the physical and emotional.  She is originally from Spain and lives in Palo Alto, California. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Right Hand Pointing, Star*Line, Book of Matches, Moss Puppy Magazine, Last Stanza Poetry Journal, and others.