DC Poets: Maritza Rivera

Two Blackjack Poems:

Cafe Ole

The aroma of coffee
filters in from around the kitchen
brewing fresh grounds for divorce

Written For My Brother

My earth angel sprouted wings
to join our ancestors.
We held hands for the last time.



Maritza Rivera, also known as Mariposa, is a Puerto Rican poet and Army veteran who has lived in Rockville, MD since 1994. She has been writing poetry for over forty years, created a short form of poetry called Blackjack, and is publisher of Casa Mariposa Press. Maritza is also the author of About You A Mother’s War, written during her son’s two tours in Iraq; Baker’s Dozen; Twenty-One: Blackjack Poems. Her work appears in literary magazines, anthologies and online publications.

Maritza is a contributor to Poets Responding to SB1070, a supporter and participant of the Memorial Day Writers Project (MDWP) and the Warrior Poetry Project at the Walter Reed National Military Medical Center in Bethesda, MD. She was the recipient of a 2012 BID International Writing Fellowship in Bahia, Brazil, attended the 2013 Bread Loaf Writers Conference in Sicily and was the recipient of the 2013 Montgomery County Executive’s Volunteer Award for Excellence in the Arts and Humanities. Maritza has also served on the Board of Directors of Split This Rock in Washington, DC, a Human Rights Commissioner for the City of Rockville. She hosts the annual Mariposa Poetry Retreat at the Capital Retreat Center in Waynesboro, PA, and the annual Mariposa Reunion Reading at the Writer’s Center in Bethesda.

She currently teaches an eight week Conversational Spanish class and a Multicultural Poetry Workshop at the Holiday Park Senior Center in Wheaton, MD.