Hope
Hope is a common theme in many literary works, and we see it in the many of the poems by Maldonado, including "Poet in a Shade of Jade" and "Submit". In the first example, the narrator wants desperately to be poor, having to work for everything instead of it being handed to her. This hope is derived from the fact that she has never known this way of life, and humanity is driven on the things that we don't know and want to find out more about. In "Submit", the narrator lists both acceptable and forbidden alternatives, and we see that many of these listings are hopeless fragments that the author will do or not do despite what she has written, and writing them down is perhaps her only hope left.
Submission
Tying in a little with the theme of hope, the theme of submission actually has a poem in this collection named after it. However, the title of the poem is more obvious that the underlying meaning that it may hold within, and we see this through the writing of Maldonado. In her poem, "Submit", the narrator writes down things that they should or should not do - things they should submit or resist - and most of these things are things they should submit to. Overall, the author is trying to convey the message that, in general, it is not a good thing to not do what your consciousness is telling you to do, since, usually, it is right.
