My favorite aspect of the Latinx poetry scene in New York is that there are many scenes. From the South Bronx to Spanish Harlem, from Bushwick, Brooklyn to Washington Heights, poetry in English, Spanish, and Spanglish is spoken, read, and discussed in cafes, bars, and bookstores in New York City. The Latinx communities make up a full third of NYC's vibrant population. With cultural backgrounds as diverse as Mexico, Colombia, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, El Salvador, Ecuador, and Puerto Rico in significantly large numbers, Nueva York both offers a long and important history of Latinx artistic traditions as well as ever-evolving frameworks for poetic expression.

My poetic home has long been Capicú. Founded by Creative Director Juan “PaPo Swiggity” Santiago and Social Media Cultural Curator George “Urban Jibaro” Torres, Capicú has been an important space for Latinx poetry for over a decade. I came to them through the people's “People's Open Mic,” a rite of passage for any young poet—including myself—to the New York Latinx scene. Unlike other open mics around the city (like the Nuyorican Slam, which carries the weight perhaps of a Nuyorican Movement History and is now more part of the tourism circuit than its original community roots), Capicú is a welcoming, unintimidating space for poets new and old. Well, at least as unintimidating as standing on a stage, gripping a mic, and baring your soul can be for an introvert like me. There is always a captive, enthusiastic audience representing all the boroughs and an amazing feature. That's right, despite the friendly, laid back—bordering on outright rowdy and rambunctious—atmosphere, some of the biggest names of Latinx poetry have graced the stage, which is open to musicians, comedians, and other performers as well. Capicú has featured acclaimed authors and poets such as Piri Thomas (author of Down these Mean Streets), Ernesto Quiñones (author of Bodega Dreams), Felipe Luciano (original member of The Last Poets, first chairman of the Young Lords Party), Lemon Anderson (Tony-Award winning playwright, poet, and actor), Willie Perdomo (award-winning poet & children's book author), Mayda Del Valle (the National Poetry Slam Champion who recently performed at the White House Poetry Jam), Hebrew Mamita (nationally recognized poet, playwright, and actor), Flaco Navaja (nationally recognized poet, actor, and singer), and Bonafide Rojas (poet, author, and musician), among others. A recent event in October featured three Nuyorican women poets: Nancy Mercado, Jani Rose, and Michelle Soto, representing three generations of New York Boricua poetic excellence.

But again, this makes it seem like the Nuyorican Poets Café or some other formalized traditional poetic open mic experience. It's hard to capture the pure joy around poetry and community that bursts out of a bar at the back of an excellent pizza shop in Bushwick, Brooklyn monthly on Friday nights. People dance between performances to Hector Lavoe and the Fania All-Stars; poets roar with laughter as Papo introduces one poet to the next either with the familiarity of an old friend or the welcoming warmth of a true host who means it when he says, “Mi casa es su casa.”

At the last open mic, I invited the featured poets to come to my home institution, Lehman College, for a repeat performance a month later. A few weeks later, I was given the opportunity to conduct a workshop, ironically and proudly, at the iconic Nuyorican Poet's Café, for Capicú's other major enterprise: SoPA or School of Poetic Arts. A series of low cost ($20) community poetry workshops, SoPA provides an important way to follow up on the open mic's inspirational and aspirational message about poetry and community. As regular attendee and veteran poet Mario “Poncé” Pagan once explained to me, Capicú is a reference to street dominos. Specifically, Capicú is the name for the play when the winning tile can be played on either open end of the layout of a domino game. There are many ways to win with Capicú and Latinx poetry in my city.

If Capicú is my longtime home, my second home is Project X. And I'm not the only one. Founders like Noel Quiñones, 25, an Afro-Boricua spoken word poet, educator, and organizer from the Bronx, also came up through Capicú. Based in the Bronx and run by a group of poets too young to be so brilliant, Project X celebrates a long forgotten and overlooked borough's history while revitalizing an underserved region. Inspired by the borough's resilience and innovation, which birthed global artistic phenomena like hip-hop and salsa, they continue the legacy of Bronx-based artistic creation with the Bronx's first monthly slam series. Their featured poets have become a list of up-and-coming and established young Latinx poets to watch. Case in point: in May 2017, Dominican American poet Elizabeth Acevedo was featured at Project X. By December of that year, she was on The New York Times' Bestseller list for her novel in verse, The Poet X. By just their second year, they made history by sending the First Bronx reppin' all Latinx slam team to the 2018 National Poetry Slam Competition, where they placed in the top twenty-five against teams from all over the world. Now in their third year, the slam focus has further centered on artistic development and community building. This year's winning team will compete for an eight-week curated artistic fellowship as well as perform as the headliners at their first ever Bronx Poetry & Arts Festival in August 2019. And after attending the first slam of the 2018-2019 season on October 25, I can't wait to see how this year's team develops.

These are just two scenes of a distinctly rich Latinx poetic city. Renowned poet Mariposa Fernandez hosts a biweekly open mic and feature reading called Barrio Poetix at La Marqueta Retoña in Spanish Harlem, a historic market place dating back to the 1920s. Writer and editor Raquel Penzo runs La Pluma y La Tinta, which organizes literary events at cafes and bookstores in all five boroughs, even the forgotten Staten Island. One of those bookstores, Word Up, is a volunteer-run multilingual, general-interest community bookshop and arts space in Washington Heights committed to preserving and building a largely Latinx (Dominican) neighborhood. They host events most days of the week.

Bottom line—the problem of Latinx poetry in New York is the reality that you may have to pick and choose amongst fabulous Latinx poets to hear, meet, and spend time with. Almost any day of the week, you can find a different Latinx event in Nueva York catering to a large and diverse Latinx community hungry for poetry. Come hungry and leave satisfecha —and don't forget your dominos.