Photo credit: Ai Hasegawa

Where did this idea of giving birth to sharks
come from?
I’m 32
It’s a good age for a woman
to think about giving life
I want to try
but wanting a baby isn’t
reason enough
to give birth.

Is it possible to carry the fetus
of another species?
I want to be an aquarium
not an incubator.

What are the advantages
of doing this?
We don't need more humans.

And it would be a new method of food
production. Because you could
eat the baby shark
right after giving birth to it.
Exactly! It's more affordable
than raising a human, and you don't have
as many responsibilities.

Which animal would be
the most dangerous to gestate?
The blue whale
obviously.

And the simplest?
The chimpanzee because its
DNA resembles
ours. But I'm not
interested in monkeys.
I’d love to give
birth to a Maui dolphin.
They're so sweet smart smooth
We could easily communicate
and they're adorable.
It would be great to swim with them.
I love dolphin meat
but I feel guilty
for eating an endangered creature.

I thought you'd choose shark.
I love sharks, too
they're almost as smart as dolphins.
My favourite is the zebra shark
: it's kind of round
: it has a really cute face
: almost like a puppy!

Would those animals taste better?
We'd have to let them roam free
for a while
so they taste
like what we're used to.
After all
there are animals that eat
their own young.
We eat veal
which comes from inside a cow.
We even kill people,
not even for food,
and they too come out of
somebody’s womb.
I really don’t see the problem.

Would you eat a dolphin
you’ve given birth to?
Dead, yes.
Once it has calved
I’d follow the baby's trail
with a GPS and when it's for sale
I’d buy it and eat it.
That way I would have it in my body
one last time.

Dora Prieto is a Mexican-Canadian poet living in Oakland, California, where she’s a 2025–27 Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford. Her debut poetry collection is forthcoming with House of Anansi in April 2027—still in search of a title 🙏🏼—and she’s the poetry winner of the 2025 Bronwen Wallace Award for Emerging Writers. A member of El Mashup Collective, she writes and lives between languages and geographies, and her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Acentos Review, Maisonneuve, Catapult, The Capilano Review, Room, EVENT, Hazlitt, and more.

Born in a city of eternal Spring (Cuernavaca, Mexico) and raised in el Distrito Federal, Daniela Rodriguez Chevalier currently writes and translates from unceded Coast Salish territories (Vancouver, BC). Her work has appeared in Discorder, PRISM International, carte blanche, and more. She is co-founder of artist collectives mim and El Mashup, and Festival Coordinator, and programmer at the Vancouver Latin American Film Festival. As DJ D-Rod, she co-hosts Vivaporú on CiTR 101.9FM. Recently, she’s been a Citizen Poet in Vancouver's Poet Laureate’s “Here, Hearing” residencies. Dani has two feisty gorgeous dachshunds, Xoco and Rol.

 

¿De dónde sacaste la idea de dar a luz
tiburones?
Tengo 32 años
es una buena edad
para pensar en tener hijos
quiero intentarlo
pero querer un bebé no es
razón suficiente
para parir.

¿Es posible llevar el feto
de otra especie?
Quiero ser un acuario
no una incubadora.

¿Cuáles son las ventajas
de hacer esto?
No necesitamos más humanos.

Y sería un nuevo método de producción
alimentaria. Porque uno podría
comerse al tiburón bebé
justo después de parirlo.
¡Exacto! Es más costeable
que criar a un humano, y no tienes
tantas responsabilidades.

¿Qué animal sería
el más peligroso de gestar?
La ballena azul
obviamente.

¿Y el más sencillo?
El chimpancé porque su
ADN se parece
al nuestro. Pero no me
interesan los changos.
Me encantaría dar a
luz a un delfín de Maui.
Son tan lindos listos lisos
podríamos comunicarnos fácilmente
son adorables.
Sería genial nadar con ellos.
Amo la carne de delfín
pero siento culpa
por comerme a un bicho
en peligro de extinción.

Pensé que escogerías el escualo.
También me encantan los tiburones,
son casi tan inteligentes como los delfines.
Mi favorito es el tiburón cebra
: es como redondo
: tiene una cara monísima
: ¡casi como un cachorrito!

¿Esos animales sabrán mejor?
Tendríamos que dejarlos en libertad
un tiempo
para que sepan
a lo que estamos acostumbrados.
Después de todo
hay animales que se comen
a sus propias crías.
Nosotros comemos ternera
que es la cría de la vaca.
Incluso matamos gente
aunque no para comérnosla
pero esa gente también viene
de alguien.
No veo dónde está el problema.

¿Te comerías un delfín
que hubieses parido tú?
Muerto, sí.
Una vez que haya alumbrado
seguiría el rastro del bebé
con un GPS y cuando esté a la venta
lo compraría y me lo comería.
Así lo tendría en mi cuerpo
una última vez.

Xitlalitl Rodríguez Mendoza (Guadalajara, Jalisco, 1982) is the author of several books and chapbooks of poetry, including Polvo lugar, Datsun, Poesía morosa. Prositas de amor contra el SAT, and Jaws [Tiburón] (winner of the Ignacio Manuel Altamirano National Poetry Prize). She is also co-author, with Atahualpa Espinosa Magaña, of the essay collection Poesía y desempleo, a new edition of which, Ahora con más poesía y más empleo, will be released soon. She has translated several children's and young adult books from French, most notably Tengo 14 años y no es una buena noticia by Jo Witek. She is currently pursuing an Interinstitutional Doctorate in Art and Culture at the University of Guadalajara.

Read Dora Prieto and Daniela Rodríguez interviewed by Lauren Peat.