Aztlán Is a Pen

The Dreadful Night Ana Castillo Cursed Me and My Ex-boyfriend

2010-03-03T20:38:00.007-06:00

(or The Wolf Man Meets Dr. Jekyll)
(or El Santo vs. The Wolf Man and Dr. Jekyll)

Chapter 1. La Catrina's Curse.

I’m a werewolf and my ex-boyfriend is Dr. Jekyll. No seriously, I’m a werewolf. Look, I can prove it. You think I got all this hair on my arms and chest and butt from my Mexican or Cuban ancestry? I’m telling you. I’m a fucking werewolf. Being a werewolf isn’t like becoming a Chicano after self-exploration and a Latino Studies 101 class in college. You’re born a werewolf and you don’t know you’re one until, well until something traumatic brings the monster out of you. But, I should have always known I was a werewolf.

One day, when I was about thirteen, I woke up and PUFF, I had hair all over my face, my balls, me legs, you name it. I’m a beast. But that’s not the point. I was trying to tell you about my relationship to the illustrious and elusive, Dr. Jekyll. Check it, so if I’m the modern, Latino werewolf writer, then he was the contemporary Latino mad artist extraordinaire. He was a painter, yes, it was like a psycho surrealist Dali and Lorca love affair. We were all passion. All art and empty promises. We were young. We were stupid. But we were desperately in love.

This is how it all went down. No bullshit. For real. I guess neither one of us knew we were dating a monster. It just sort of all happened one ominous night, full-moon and all. The Aztec moon goddess, Coyolxauhqui, don’t ask me how to pronounce that, must have had a special eye out for us that night. Our blood was fresh with poetry and romance, ready to gay it up at Spot 6 in Boystown. We were going on a special date to drink and dance and go see the Kumbia Queers, a Mexican lesbian punk/pop/kumbia group I’d found on myspace and fell in love with. I even downloaded all four of the only tracks I could get my hands on and made a mix for Dr. Doolittle, my ex, the weekend before. I was beyond excited. I was elated. Finally a funky dance group for our kind. The artsy queer, hipster-ripster proud Latino types. We would see Ana Castillo read and then run up north on The L.

I can tell you the date exactly, Friday, September 19, 2008. Yes, this story has taken me almost 2 years to write. I know, your probably thinking what a sentimental fuck, but seriously I was fucking traumatized. It’s not everyday you realize you’re a fictional European archetype of horror, of both the novel and film forms. Anyways, the reason I remember the date so specifically is because, eliterati.blogspot.com dutifully notes the record of that fateful evening which started at the recently deceased Tianguis coffee shop and bookstore on Cullerton and Damen, right off the Damen (now) Pinkline Station.

See, Dr. Dimwit and I had just spent the better part of the evening attentively listening to Ana Castillo read from her then recently published and promoted novel, The Guardians, which I have yet to read but I’m sure is stunning, at the quaint and eternally missed Latina owned coffee and cultural center that was Tianguis: Books. Tea. Culture. (www.tianguis.biz). But, honestly La Señora Castillo kinda scares me. Her work is of course monumental, influential, moving, etc. etc. it’s just after that night, her presence lingers with me like la Llorona or something even creepier and more elegant like La Catrina. Yeah, that’s it Ana Castillo is La Catrina of this story. She kinda has a ghoulish quality about her anyways, but don't tell nobody I said that.

So anyways there we were listening to La Catrina read from her new novel, all mesmerized by her star power, hanging off her every word, and me trying to act all cool like, yeah, whatever, this foundational Chicana feminist from my hometown Chicago, “ain’t all that and a bag of chips,” like my moms would say. After the Q & A there was a little book signing, and as I approached La Catrina’s small table she could sense my novice novella writing ways, she could feel the tight hold Dr. Jekyll’s awe and astonishment by this imposing artist and modern figure.

Before I could say anything from behind my eager smile, she asked me, as I presented her my copy of I Ask the Impossible to sign, “You’re a writer?” And I just looked at her shyly, “sure… I try.” And she said, very sternly, “You should try harder.” That was it. She cursed me. She said something to my Ex, who I, of course, purchased a copy of her new book for him to get signed, and take away from that night and read, and poor all of his anguish and guilt for this night into after we broke up. See we broke up that very night.

Right after the reading, right after Ana Castillo cursed us with whatever her knowing witch and writer ways predicted. We would be split apart in true 1950’s horror flick fashion. Awkward close ups and cheep affects, thick pancake batter makeup and intense noir lighting. The night we broke up, I mean, the night La Catrina ripped us apart, we were in a black and white Béla Lugosi film, or better yet, an Ed Wood picture.

Luis Meets Cherríe Moraga

2008-10-29T00:26:00.005-05:00

On Oct 16, 2008 I met the renown Cherríe Moraga @ the University of Urbana-Champaign. It was an honor to be invited personally by the Latina/o Studies Dept. to attend a private writing workshop led by this legend and prophet. All I can say is that her presence and manner of being matches the impact of her words. She is what she writes. Her written works resonate through her voice and out here eyes. She is truly inspiring and motivating.

Lessons Learned from Cherríe Moraga
(a rough translation)

Luis: How do I write past all the introductions and beginnings to stories that seem to endlessly invade my writing. I have many story to tell. But, it seems like every time I start to write all the stories want to be told at the same time.

Cherríe: Don't be afraid to start new stories. Save the beginnings. Trust and know, you will finish them all. You have no other choice. Ask your self at the beginning of each re-write or attempt, "What I really meant to say was..." Nothing shifts in the world until the details are told. Take a risk. Tell the stories que valen la pena. If your not uneasy or on the edge of something you're not writing well. Keep every story grounded in the body.

Gracias a Aide por los fotos, y a todos mis compañer@s en Champaign-Urbana: Miranda, Profe Rodriguez, Abel, Alicia, Judith, Joana, todos. Gracias a Cherríe Moraga y a la facultad de Latin@ Estudies.

- Jose Luis Benavides

Prototypes: Deconstructing Media Representations of Manhood

2008-09-05T16:15:00.026-05:00

Swaggerzine, Young Chicago Authors (08)

Caged Bird Canto

Pedro Santana (Inspired by My Bloody Life)

With the specific mission to deconstruct and reconstruct prototype images of men in the media, I was able to focus my energies less on inspiration and more on motif, creating environments and portraits of these characters. Each portrait serves as a platform for these scripted characters to speak freely, highlighting their personal tastes and places of pride. Each character and each piece stands on its own, but through the direction of Swaggerzine’s mission, the larger body of work holds a unique conversation.

Then each character/prototype of a man, as represented through the media, holds a dialogue with the viewer through the straight on gaze of each portrait vs. the fabricated tension television generates between its productions and the invisible audience. These men never see the audience that gazes at them, and these characters never see the social norms pulling around them. As constant subjects of an audiences’ gaze each man becomes agent in his respective environment, the consumer-based media that produces him. Each collage and person plays with the commercial ads that encase and engender them into static and iconographic ideals of manhood.

Lastly, these men and their encased images speak to me. These men tell me, subtly and no so subtly, they know I am watching. It cannot suffice to say that TV and Hollywood raised me. I had no father growing up, save one quiet, hard working tío in the states and an abuelo removed to México, I was captivatedly raised by these men.

I believe collage art allows for the mundane and unnoticed to talk and move. Nothing, then, can be taken for granted.

Pajarito, Peel Me Suave

Latin Lover (Inspired by Rico Suave)

Black Arts Starve

J.J. Evans

Bring Home the

James Evans, Sr.

Affluential Influence

Heathcliff Huxtable

Archie-typical

Archie Bunker

(c) Jose Luis Benavides, all collages and artist statement

Immigrant Nation AUDITIONS

2008-09-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

IMMIGRANT NATION: A human rights struggle for the new millennium is searching for spoken word poets for an independent upcoming documentary about the immigration movement. If you are a spoken word poet who has a piece about the immigration movement and are interested in being part of the independent documentary, we will be having auditions on September 5th-12th. Spoken word pieces will be used as a form of artistic involvement within the immigration movement. If you are unable to attend please submit a video link with your spoken word performance to immigrantnation08@gmail.com and a copy of your poem.

AUDITIONS
When: September 5th or September 12th
Where: Radioarte 90.5 FM corner of 18th street and Blue Island
Time: 4pm-7pm

If you are planning to attend please e-mail your name, title of piece, copy of poem, length of performance, and schedule time and date to immigrantnation08@gmail.com, Subject Title: AUDITION. Please be prepared to perform your piece in front of a camera.

If you would like more information please send your questions to immigrantnation08@gmail.com, Subject Title: QUESTION.

This is an independent community production so any assistance and contribution would be greatly appreciated. We need to create our own history and work as a community.

2008-08-19T10:35:00.000-05:00

Lulu Grabs the Boy.

Lulu grabs the boy. His fist full of Lego's that Aida bought him for his 1st B-day. Lourdes told Ida he was too young for stuff like that. He might choke. But Ida put the legos in his hands anyways. And he knew. Connect this. Here. Connect this. There. Everyone knew this boy was gonna be something, grow up and be somebody. They trusted him not to choke himself on something silly and immature like toys. He was much smarter than that. This bright boy and his shining mother. The Lego's leaving imprints of sharp edges, squares, rectangles, and little circles pink in his palms.

Aida's Scream.

Her yell was wide and wet and heavy. Aida, her short-tempered tongue all swears and death treats. "!Put that boy dooown. Staaay! Lourdes, a donde carajo crees que vas?!" A little boy screaming. "!Where the fuck you going, Lourdes???!!!! Put that boy down!" Aida yankes Lulu's arm back. The boy almost falls. Arms in tangles. The knot of bellowing boy against her temple. "Lourdes stay. Stay you fucking bitch, goddammit girl. I told you. Stay!" The final blow. The boy screaming. She does not put her hand up to her face. She does not feel the sting of thick rings and short fingernails. Not this time. The tears are only in Luis's eyes. The little boy screaming. Aida's sharp tongue. Sharp fist. Sharp mouth and eyes and now. Nothing. Aida left screaming at the door closing in on her face. The feeling that she's lost her, she's lost Lourdes and that boy and Lourdes's Truman Community College Financial Aid government checks forever. This time it's for real. This time that bright little boy and that bright shining mother. Gone. Good and gone.

The Long Walk.

Aida left screaming at walls that will not play with lego's left scattered on the floor. Sharp little razor blades of red, green, blue, and yellow. Dishes smashed into confetti on walls that won't be picked up by Lourdes anymore. Ida staired at the door closing. Wet her lips, dry cracks from all this heart heat of yelling breath out her. The boy's wailing gut-gasps away, away down the hall, away somewhere faint into the street. The train rolls by and covers the crying. The train rolls by a shake through the apartment and through her. Lourdes grabbed the boy and walks. The bag of diapers, a bottle of milk for a boy too big to be drinking from bottles. His heavy, toddlering weight all knees and big head and hard eyes on her back. Straining her body. Heavy down. The concrete strong, holding her up. She knows, the street is stronger than we are, holds us up 'cus there's no one else to. This monster of a boy in her arms screaming, and the Lego's cutting pink into palms, scratching at her shoulder, his nails at her neck. Tiny boy nails. He's screaming and he doesn't know why. Lulu grabbed the boy and walks.

Western Avenue and What Awaits a Wayward Women.

Walk. Walk. Walk. All the way back. To a home she never lived in. A mother who did not want her, like church and heaven had cast her out. Lulu said she'd never go back there, never go back where she could not be what she only ever was. This bastard boy and her bastard living. Her wayward ways. Her sin stink on the lip tips her, soul pink pussy pulsing proud panic. She would never go back to churches and chisme. Never go back to Mama y Papa. Never go back. Never go back. Go back.

She walked to the only place she could, away from all those people Ida knew, all those words that idea said, all those things this monster baby boy had seen, and would not remember, she knew, would be trapped in his hot-hating, angry little heart forever. This boy who couldn't could barely speak but curse words. Little boy who swore at things that did not connect, like shadows, puzzles, people and clouds. A little caca-mouthed bad boy with only one word. Bitch. This little monster had cursed her out. She grabbed the boy and started walking, after she slapped him silly for swearing at her. At her. This snot-nosed baboso baby boy dripping babas and mocos all down her back, up around her shoulder, screaming in her left-deaf ear. She could not hear him. Only the swearing. She did not pat him calm, pat him warmth, pat him gently, calm him down, not even once. She did not stop to fix the bag barely hanging from her arm. She never once tried to breathe.

What Streets Say to Street Walkers.

She walked. A rage of humiliation all in the street signs and red lights back to a home. Street signs, stop signs. Puta St. Yield. Go back where you came from. Bitch Ave, please, whatchu doin? Stop ho, no. Where you think you're goin? Even the side walk whispering at her boy, Bastard Piece of Shit St go back where you came from, some seedy gutter-land place where your kind comes from. But she walked back to a home. She never lived in. From Uptown to Logan Square, in the dead of night down Western. A mother's rage protecting her, a wild thing, a roaring thing that kept all predators, dope-dealing, pick pocketing, outcast and cursed creatures like her away. This short haired women in a rage. Buzz-cut women burning up, her upper lip caught on her snaggle-tooth the ways it does when she's all rush and blood like a dog, unthinking, instinct, defense, emotion takes over, deliberate, storming. Like a bitch. Aida's howl at her. What unwitting creatures of night would dare approach a barking, raging cloud of curses and cries? A mother and son all fire, rushing rage. She walked.

No Change. Women, Change.

No change in the heat of a moment in her pockets. No change for tokens from currency exchanges that aren't open in the dead of night anyways. No change for the buses that don't run that late anyways. She walks. Up the stairs of the gray house on Artesian. Her mother at the door. "Prometame que esta es la ultima ves. Prometame que esta ves lo vas a cer para el." This time it's for real. This time it's for him, Ma. "Todo para el, Ma." Everything for him, Ma.

El Gran Desmayo

2006-08-30T09:54:00.000-05:00

Alter Serving Sickness.

He started to have the dizzy spells and headaches in churches. He was an alter boy. One sad Saturday night alter serving a funeral for a poor man who was murdered while helping someone who was being robbed. The robber grabbed a loose brick in the alley and bashed it over his head. He’d never been very sensitive to the many dead bodies carried up those church steps, until this one. Standing, holding the candle up for the reading. He saw the wet alley, the brick hitting his head. Water and blood. Bits of white and blue bone. He saw the body go limp. The reading was so fitting, beautiful, tragic. The Good Samaritan. He couldn’t hold back, and then the headache. He saw the brick come towards him, heavy dizziness. His knees began to shake. But he held it together. Focusing on the flame of the candle in front of him. His arms felt heavy. The glass around the candle shaking, clattering a bit because of his hands. Took a deep breath to calm himself. Padre Almodovar saw the single tear role down Alejandro’s cheek. Alejandro couldn’t tell if it was because of the sadness, this poor man’s sacrifice or the sharp pain, a thorn right above his eyes, deep into the brain, making him cry.

Adios to Church and Dios.

The headaches got worse. Until he had to stop serving funerals. Finally had to stop going to church all together. All the Tías and Abuela giving him the evil eye on Sundays, as he looked at them sad-eyed and sorry. No one believed he really had the headaches, except his mother. Everyone thought he was just making up excuses to not have to go to church. “But Ma that doesn’t even make sense. You know I like alter-serving. You know I like the songs, the service.” “I know mijo. I know, calma, calma.” He tried to figure out, the sharp pain starting under the eyes sometimes. Or at the temples. Like his hair was being pulled back hard. Or a pinch behind the nose that would grow into a pounding throb. Ma couldn’t take him to the doctor, what would she say? Mi hijo tiene dizzy spells and headaches in churches? What should we give him? Some holy water and Eucharist tablets? Una limpiada with a rotten egg, the cool shell rolled over his body?

Alejandro grew up. Out of catholic grammar school, off to catholic high school. But, for all those years he never entered a church. And he stopped believing in God too. One day, the voice that he’d talked to for so many years. That thing inside of him that he thought, called, God…disappeared. In the shower one day at college, gone. He was talking to himself. His thoughts and speeches, monologues and soliloquies were being directed to some strange force of narration in the back of his head. The voice was towards people he knew, or saved for stories. The great narrator inside his head. He thought, God must have been what man imagined his inner voices to be, his own thoughts, the worst, and most fantastic of us. The more imaginative of us humans, the creative, illustrious artistic shamans, we must have turned that voice, that inspired thing inside us, that rush over the skin, deep in back of the throat, tight at fingertips to create, that strange tingle, must have been the first thought of something spiritual…something like a muse or god. Yes, the gods are our self-narrations. The gods’ voices, our own…self-importance.

Santos in the Eyes.

One winter day he went to visit una amiga, Cristina. He’d never been to her home before in Humboldt Park. He walked from Fullerton and California to her house in the wet Chicago winter snowfall, the lights fuzzy, everything glistening wet with snow. Hungry for Cristina’s ma’s cooking. He could smell the arroz con gandules, lechón, acapurias, y tostones on the tongue, snowflakes melting into his clothes. He’d barely eaten that day, slipping along the sidewalks, trying not to get his boots too soaked in slush. Finally he arrived, up three flights of stairs to the apartment. Everyone was already talking and eating. He got comfortable, besos and abrasos to todos, and straight to the food. Sitting their eating in the living room he noticed the fireplace decorated with ornate vases, strange beautiful things that looked like fancy punch bowls. Four or five of them all in a row, with flowers and fruits, figurines and candles, beads and all sorts of things around them, inside them. His vision began to blur. The lights along that wall began to pinch at his eyes. He squinted and kept eating. The night went on and everyone left. He stayed talking with Cristina and asked, “Hey is there something wrong with the lights in here? What are those vases? Cus the lights along that wall are bugging me. She looked at him, her eyebrow raised, curious. “Esos son los Santos, Orishas. The Santaría…dioses.”

Debajo Iglesias.

Alejandro went of on several trips to México, to visit family, to learn something about his culture, to regain the broken clay pieces of his Spanish, cracked along the years, to gnaw on the dirt and lick the sky’s brilliant, dirty blue. In one of those trips, visiting a church named San Matin de los Mayos, he walked in taking pictures of the gold leafed trimming along the alter. Snarling at the grotesque and outlandish, exaggerated and imposing grandeur of the décor. The obviousness of its intent to leave such an oppressive, heavy sense of awe, this new white God over the natives. To convert them by the shear force of this eye-soar of a church. Gothic monstrous spiked, gold and bloody imaged Jesús y somber Virgen painted thing. He learned the most ornate and “beautiful” gold-leafed churches all lit up magnificent and magical, the very best of the “best” churches in México were always the ones closest to mines. Where the wealthy Spanish miners would give gold and silver to build churches, petitions to God to keep the wealth coming. He thought, some strange sad offering of the land up to a foreign God, a god not of that dirt, those waters, that rock or sky. This new God ravaging, cultivating, carving deep into the earth god’s side. The old walls leaking, a draft brushed the back of his neck.

The blurred vision began, the slight throbbing around the eyes and temples. He squinted trying to read the small plaque at the entrance as he left. The church was built over native temples, left in ruins. The Spaniards’ custom, to convert the natives with this new God supplanted over the old. The holy land where the pyramids stood at least kept sacred, revered by the natives. Another conversion technique. The whole hill that the church was built on, actually the base of a temple, buried under years of green. The headache worse now. His eyes drawn to the wood floor. Old and worn. With wholes, notches in every other bored, that looked like for lifting the floorboards. He asked his tía standing along the side admiring a supposedly miraculous, still growing wooden statue of Jesús, “what’s these holes in the floor for?” “Ah mijo they’re for the dead buried debajo de la iglesia.” The headache burned for three days straight. He’d learned to keep quiet about it though. To live past it. To keep breathing. And most of all to avoid any more churches.

Visions at Teotihuacan.

Another trip to México he visited los pirámides de Teotihuacan. This time he was ready, anticipating the dizzy spells, actually looking forward to them. By know he’d come to accept them. To think of them as a strange kind of gift. Something of a link to the other worlds, those of the dead, ancient gods, the unseen, spirits, los muertos. He saw himself climbing the steps of those pyramids and the heavy hand of one of those gods coming over him, sending him tumbling down the steps. He might die. He might see or sense something. The meaning of these spells. His strange curse. His gift.

He climbed the pyramid of the Sun and the Moon. Nothing. Not even the slightest bit of nausea, no dizziness. Nothing. Only the cool sweat of the climb. No visions. No voices. Only the slight panting. The beauty of the mountaintops hidden behind misty clouds. The luscious green of the valley.

El Museo de Antropología, DF.

He went with his abuelos to the famoso Museo de Antropología en el DF. He’d gotten up that morning, a little nauseas. He thought maybe he was catching a cold. His nose slightly runny. He ate some cereal, a banana and some bread. And off they went to the museum. An hour or two into the museum. After he’d walked with Abuela through the halls of evolution, wondering what she could be thinking. Her strong Catholic conservative, old way, strict and condemning thinking. He noticed her quieter than usual. She usually had something smart-mouthed, almost instigating to say about everything and everyone. Her sharp tongue silent through the halls. Past diagrams and skulls of Australopithecus this and Neanderthal that. The many stages of evolution spelled out. The skulls and skeletons and theories behind glass for all the eager eyes. Her silence. What was she thinking?

They entered into the hall dedicated to Teotihuacan. He recognized the recreation of the side of one of the temples. The pyramid to the Sun. With it’s giant stone faces of Quetzalcoatl, the feathered serpent and Tlaloc with his fangs, the rain god. He tried to read the plaques along the walls, many people walking around behind him. And the dizziness came. The squinting of the eyes trying to read. His stomach began to ache. He walked forward towards a glass window, searching for somewhere to sit down. A few steps forwards, he looked down at his feat, the walls and everything around him swaying. He reached down trying to kneel, but fell. His whole body heavy. He only heard the thud of his knees hitting the floor. Surprised. He was falling. Everything fading. The voice of Abuela, Ay Mijo qué pasa? He felt her at his side. Another voice and maybe someone lifting him from the other side. And then black. Down on his back. A circle of people around him. Voices. Se ve muy pálido. Da le aire. Quítale la chaceta. Da le aire. Esta sudando. Alza sus pies. Voices. The cool of the floor on his back. Everything black. His body lip.

Is this happening? Everything dark. Can’t move. Can’t see. One thought. Slight fear. Ay dios, I’m going to die hear. On the floor of the museo with everyone watching. Que vergüenza. No. No. Te desmayaste, ya. Levántate. La voc. The voice, calling from behind the eyes. No body. Darkness. The cool floor like fingers pushing feeling along his back. The voice. Get up. Your hand to your forehead. How silly, how embarrassing. Te desmayaste. Te desmayaste.

Novela de las Lluvias.

2006-08-15T15:06:00.000-05:00

The Climb.
Tláloc, dios de la lluvia. Today is a day storm, mo thunder, no lightning. It was raining this same kind of soft, sad and smiling rain when he went. When he went with Abuela, climbing up to the top of something he’d never dreamed off. Cloud covered green in the distance. Valley lined and scratched, deep scar-memory streets of an ancient city carved into the green green earth. México of today and more than two million years ago. The city of Teotíhuacan, before the Aztecs, city where the gods were born. Home of the Sun and the Moon. Enormous pyramids, massive man made mountains. A thousand faces, beautiful beasts, gods. Heavy pilgrimage of people, still made to this place, keeping the steps and stones alive. Tourists like him, but people. Sweat, blood and breath. Some kind of offering to these old old gods, he thought. Many feet. Panting lungs. Mouths open. Flashing of cameras like lightning. Keeping the gods satisfied, for now. Content to be visited by the mixed and moaning children of their stretched out, conquered and crumbling, almost forsaken, almost forgotten futures. Living pasts in their lineage of blood. The sacrifice of children around the bases, beginnings and means to ends. Tears of children dripped into ceremonial bowls to build and bless them.

Luis almost cried. Tremendous fear of this place’s power. Tláloc, the rain god, was there with them. Soft wetness on the forehead, keeping the climb calm and cool. People died climbing these steps. The rain, Tláloc, was keeping him and Abuela conscious of the climb. The slick stones. One step after the other. Living. Slowly.

Her Temple.
Abuela clutched her paraguas like a banister. Climbing up slowly. She walked down the steps backwards because of her knees. Her age, but she could still do this. In her heart and head this was some mix of a Catholic penance for the poor heathen souls sacrificed here. A penance for the brown of her skin, the silent suffering in her tha¬¬t longed for this place. Strange mix of her witchcraft ways, her Indian eyes, the water in them, not the pain of climbing but the truth of falling. Her fear, her certain fall from grace. Something racing, excited in her here when the tour guide told them this was Tláloc’s temple, the green of the mountains, the unending rains. Rivers. The fertility god’s power of flood and drought. A dryness in her. She remembered. Blushing up the side of the pyramids. She remembered what it felt like. Panting. She remembered. Heaven falling out of her. Onto the skin, all the gods in her, moaning. Sky falling. Dripping down the side of temples. The body was a temple, she prayed. She remembered what it felt like to defile it. To worship it with sex. To defile it, and like it.

Sun Storms In México.
Today is a day storm. Like the day they climbed. No thunder, no lightning. Same soft, sad and smiling rain. Something seductive in the smell of the Bugambilias bright pink-purple in Abuela’s garden. Abuela gone. Out to Church for some time, she tried to drag him with her, but failed. He stayed put watching the first drops of rain touch his window. And this is when he thought. He remembered. This is Tláloc, following me down from the temples, the sides of those pyramids, come to save me. Tláloc’s forever to his 14 year old body. His deep longing for love. His wild imagination. He knew that Tláloc was different. Not the fantasies and make believe of childhood. Nothing like Jesús and all his promises. Tláloc was real. As heavy as the clouds, as wide as those temples, as old as the earth beneath them, the waters dripping down. Constant, and pressing.

He knew this. He knew that Tláloc would be his lover, or bring him one. Though at his age he did not think or know that he could ever actually love a boy, that men could fall in love, hold hands and fit into each other. Kiss or know the taste of smiles, long lives or romance together. Tláloc was his only hope. Here in México visiting Abuela. Spending the end of summer with her here. Surprised by the everyday rains. The difference between here and the flat gray of Chicago with straight to the sky castles, pyramids to some god named Money. Here, the warm Sun god and then the soft-heavy showers, something constant. Bright colors and a greens he’d never seen before. A smoky, soft-sulfur, garbage and people, a corn kind of smell. Something about being up along the base of mountains. A lack of breath. This was the rainy season just getting started. He thought, I will make my offering to Tláloc in the jardín while Abuela is away. And He will come. He will come.

Offerings.
A million fingers, gold fingers touching his naked body among the potted plants, among the green. The 8 or 10 canaries in their cages all around the garden chirping to the clouds, singing with him, the whistling of his young heart. Cold but comfortable, his bare butt against the cool cement. The splash of puddles forming around him, his grandmother’s small cement garden, high cement wall with broken glass spikes along the top, reflecting the sun breaking in through the gray.

Abuela’s hair a thick gray cloud, short thick thick hair, all black and white waves. Heavy sky crashing, down the weight of her hands slapping his face, his naked nalga slap, slap face, slap nalga. She slips in the rain, her skirt soiling with the splashes. The fall from above, thunder of voices. His tears, his smiling, his calm calm crying. Something wet inside him let out in the excitement, for the first time. The first of many. Terror in his heart bursting, into calm warm wetness. His hands along himself, his hardness pointing to the clouds, to Tláloc when Abuela stormed into to the jardín a thousand cachetadas and curses. ¡¿Qué carajó haces, niño? ¡Que cochinadas! ¡Dios mío, no! ¡Ay dios! Slap. The splashing.

Rain Falls.
It never stopped raining those months after. Tláloc was smiling on his new lover Luis. And Luis would have to wait until waterfalls, camping with his new lover-boy in college back in the States. He’d wait his whole life for the one or two loves after. Deep deep, sacrifice and offering kind of loves. The kind he’d knew he’d have to wait for. The kind Tláloc promised. That stung like cachetadas. Soaked deep the bones.
Tláloc was smiling. And Abuela, well, she never mentioned it again. Said her rosaries and did her benedictions. Stewed in her kitchen, a little afraid of this devil-boy in her house. Something familiar and old about him. This boy-thing she loved. She needed. She could not condemn him, the way she had herself. The way she had the first time and forever after she had stopped her offerings to Tláloc too, with how many lovers, how many men in the night. While her husband slept. In that same jardín, she had tasted the rain of skin, her husband’s and other men’s. She had held their fury, thunder bolts pulsing in her palm. To her breast. Inside her. She had seen Tláloc smiling. His pink hanging swell of calm after. But she was afraid.

She hid her face under Church and shroud. She had forgotten and forgiven those sins a thousand tears after her Panzón had died. After she erased all fear of infidelities, fear it was her sin that had killed him. That everything in life could really come down to something as self-centered and ridiculous as self-suffering, Catholic guilt, for everything and anything bad in universe. What sin had she committed to deserve this boy? This beautiful monster. The feathers from the birds, the specks of birdseed, feathers and bits of soil stuck to his wet naked leg as she dragged him sobbing into the house. She thought of Quetzalcoatl. The feathered serpent. His face along the pyramids. Tláloc with his fangs. Neither they, nor this boy, nor anything inside her or her past could explain this curse. Something in this orange, red and yellow house. Something in the blood. Repetitions, the consistency of histories, time. Rain, and this kind of sadness. Sad, soft and smiling.

The Way to Words.
He could see a brown church out over the rising mountain, heavy mountain with many homes stacked on top of each other all along its side. With their white and blue and yellow sides, their red, gray and orange roofs, thousands of mouths open, windows with wide palms begging, streets with thin limbs and tangles of black black hair and specks of white and yellow around the eyes. Dogs dogs dogs. Sniffing in the streets. Scratching behind bitten ears. Fleas. Among the garbage. Panting. Begging. Begging. México with its mountain knees and breasts and hips bent over shoulders and the rounding off of wide belly hills, deep valley’s under blue-gray thighs.

He saw a magic in México, that only shown in the dark shadows after storms, the smell of smoke wet and tires soaked in stink, and everything hazy with a moist gray. Los limones on the limón tree out back looked a brighter green, and the yellow painted walls glistened a thick orange-gold. The purple Bugambilias and spinned nopales seemed a little overstuffed spitting out their pedals and spikes. Everything green seemed stretched out taller, and the soil in all the pots, black pupils sprouting bushes, thick branches tickling the sky to tears. Everything alive and wet. Even the church that hid its arched neck under spiny Crosses out on the mountain seemed to soak in some of the vibrant blue, it’s brown steeple seemed a little confused, full and fatter, under the clouds, it’s arches bent in awe of the rains. The other half of the mountain not yet stacked with houses, not carved with streets, was the lushest and saddest green he’d ever seen.

This is where he fell in love with a new god, some son of Tláloc who could keep him, warmer than the rain, longer than life or love. This is when he fell in love with words. And began to write. He began to write the forever of words in his heart. He had asked for a lover, for Tláloc to come, to love him. But instead of a body, flesh and beating heart. Tláloc came as the words. A flood and constant crashing of words. His first, last and only lovers.

Communications and Communions.
Something of witchcraft, he watched as she would throw a handful of her toenail clippings into the bushes, eggshells around the soul in her jungle of potted plants in the house and outside. Once he gained the courage to ask her why, and she said it was to help the roots grow strong like toenails and keep the seeds fertile like the eggs, or so he understood in his mix of Spanglish. Abuela really talked with her hands. He could always know what she meant and how she meant it by her hands. Pinches and slaps. Hugs and serving. Long fingernails perfectly cut and filled for hours con la fila while watching novellas or humming some witch chant she called the rosary. Perfect cuticles, not like his, a mess of bitten fingernails, dirty under-nails, hangnails that split up the finger stinging sour when he sliced limones for limonada, guacamole, or squeezed over carne. He learned to love that sting.

Abuela could always tell if he’d been eating enough fiber or if he needed more iron by the condition of hands, the fatness of fingers, the color or thickness of nails. She’d always slap him to stop biting his nails, to stop gnawing at hangnails. Buena gente no hace eso. Buena gente tiene los manos delgados, doblados, limpios y un poco debil.

But, despite all the care, creams and clippings, polish and filings, her hands had a wideness about them, a roughness that was less scratchy and more sandy, something heavy in the way she held pots, a flexing of muscles around the wrist that he’d never seen in any ones hands but hers, as she flipped and smashed and stuffed and swirled and sliced and pinched and pulled and peeled her way through the kitchen. She was a true witch in the kitchen, everything a spicy smoke, a sour stirring, simmering sweet, dark brown, red, white, yellow and green bubbling around her.

He loved to watch her cook. And so he learned how to cook. A new religion. The taste of words and the pressing of food, forks and spoons. Pens and pencils, became the way of all things. The only way to make it through the days until he would return completely changed. A new kind of monster, all pens and feathers, fish scales and snake fangs, smoke forks and espatulas for fingers.

The House on Bosques de Agua.
The more figurines added to the collection, the larger the army, toy soldier Saints and Virgenes to protect the house. Saints, Vírgenes and Jesús among the dirt. Hidden under flowers. Poked in the eyes and sides by nopales. Half buried faces brown with dirt. Once praying white, hands now black with mud. Abuela stayed in México with her flowers. In her jardín. Her potted plants all along the cement wall, concrete floors. Pots all in rows, pots hanging from pots stacked on pots. Green gray, brown clay. She stayed tending to her many plants. Her Rosas Negras, her tall long, pink tipped Floripondias, her round gold Copas de Oro, her lonely Niñas del Barco. Her Bugambilias y white specked colgando Corazón vines. Her pajaritos singing to the Orejas de Elefante. Her house quiet again, the clocks striking rhythms with each other, all three in the sala a tick 1, tick 2, 3. Los orejas de elefante listening to her mumbling rosaries. The birds singing to keep her company. She stayed alive to keep the plants and birds, the children and grandchildren that did not leave, did not fly away and reroot in a different country soil and sky. Drinking water safe to drink, they say.

The strange boy-thing that had invaded her silence, her routines, some summers ago was gone. Like the men that she had seen and stopped seeing, gone. Long before the vines started up her, the faint smell of fertility faded and turned to the smell of wet green, perfume and flowers. Soft scent of birds and birdseed like sand and pan dulce in the nose. Her Espinada Corona de Cristo with its four, small red flowers, four drops of blood. When she pluck the flowers, their white milk, sour smell. She watched the hanging shells, slightly swaying with the earthquakes through the years. The walls with generations, faces, daughters, sons, sisters, friends. Picture frames of her wedding, smiling, gray gold-tipped fading, cracked and crooked on the walls. Votive candles and the many statues of la Virgen, Saints and Jesús on Crosses covering the walls. Littering the shelves and table tops. The insides just as much a jungle of cluttered things as the outside with green. Vines inside and out of her, tilting everything. Crawling up her nyloned legs. Tickling the tummy. She laughted. When she died. She smiled. No rain.

Everything Left in His Name.
She fed the birds and remembered. Him sitting watching the feathers one morning. The rhythmic squeaking of one canaria with her feathers stretched up, mounted by an orange male. He sat watching, enthralled by their panting squeaks. No words. No questions. She pretended she didn’t see him sitting there staring. She knew that he knew. And he did. No words. 14 years old. He knew. And would start to know. Some secret of living. Some mystery of insides all coming out. The stretching. Panting squeaking of something hard, flexing inside. Something soft to something long, fat and rhythmic in us all. A throbbing in the guts, outward. No words. She discovered the mystery without explanation. No one had told her how or when or why, no one had told her with shapes and pictures, diagrams and long long names the way it would happen. It just did. Surprised every time. Some mystery of a thing when she bled, and some mystery of a thing when she got pregnant, when she gave them life, when they fell out of her like so many other things she had seen fall from fat furred or feathered creatures in San Martin, her home town.

Only prayers and jolts of things changed. The boy had come to México to change. To grow feathers on the chest, snake scales on the legs, nopal spikes on the chin. Turn something in between the legs into a warm nest and perch. A passion and a poison.

She lit candles that nigh and every night after the day storm, after seeing him sitting in her garden watching the birds. She knew this. She knew he would be a roaring thing. Insatiable, long-suffering thing like she was. Candles in his room, what used to be her children’s, even after he left. Waiting for him to return. And he would. Something in that house every summer and then every other summer until she died. He came to keep her company. To share the morning strolls, walks to church and to the carnicería. They shared those tremors only seen and felt by the hanging vines, the seashells on strings over the door, the wind chimes. The lights going out, and sitting with candles, un pan y cafesito for mirienda, moonlight and the silence they shared. So many storms. TV at night and Spanish lessons.

She’d leave him the house. It’s many secrets. The candles and the couch cushions he’d drooled on, but especially her jardín. Her green thumb, and the name of everything green he could ever see in life. All the names and secrets to keep them alive. She would leave in his name: White, Yellow, Orange, and especially Red and all its shades. She would leave him the feathers and the cages of canaries. All the figurines and their plastic eyes. The photo albums and all the frames would be left in his name.

Her House, Her Name.
He comes to take the home. To cry in the jardín without her. Tears over all the thorns, over her colgando white specked Corazón. He stays to spend the years in solitude, in hers and his. She taught him how to be a flower. How to blossom an amazing beauty that no one could have. Something that when plucked would wither and die. Something that could only, when alone. Stuck in its place. Staring at the sky. Open for water, half buried alive, but living. To be tough, and to keep the silence. To stay still within the solitude. Safe. Calm and strong in the solace. He stayed with the house. With her memory. Keeping the flowers and her alive, her altar always bright with something, flowers and candles. Keeping the plants. Watching the birds.

He keeps a journal where he writes his stories, his life unlived, among the many pages of pressed petals and leaves. Little maps of the way to a man’s hearts, into his pants, plant names, measurements to keep them alive, recipes for how to keep him and how to get rid of him when he gets too loud, too demanding. Keeping her name, her house the same scent, her flavors in the kitchen and mouth. Always on the end of his tongue, her name. In his kisses to the few lovers he’d ever bring to the house. In the goodbyes and the forever’s. The never, I love you’s. Her name. He keeps her name so much that he forgets his own. And one day thinks he is her. Wakes up and calls himself Sol, la Luna, la Lluvia. He keeps her name and calls himself, her. Calls himself her name, Soledad.

After Forever.
Soledad will learn to love. But will betray himself and his lovers, with words. Love affair with paper and pen, Tláloc’s son, his first and only love. He becomes Abuela’s secrets. The plants and the spice in her recipes. He feeds his lovers and sees them to the door. Their sacrifice of sex, their water into, his ceremonial bowls. He would be the housewife, cook for them, see to their needs. He loves it, the heartache. His freedom, his silence. Secrets. She had buried hers with the flowers. His in the page. Secrets that would crawl down legs, up the tears and out the tongue. Soft, smiling sadness. His words, the rain. His words, sweat, spice and birdseed.

Thank You’s to Tláloc
Thank you Tláloc, he prays. Whistling something long and up the spine from behind. Something about the way he thinks clear when pissing. The sound of liquid falling on liquid. The way he stands forever in the shower, inspired by the steam, the many touches of falling water, somber walks alone in rainstorms that conjure up the wild imagination, soaks him deep to write and love. Wetness of insides, the spill of himself into his lover. Moist excited throbbing of his heart, racing to tell. Thudding blood to eyes, hands to lips, to tell. To write. He becomes the falling rain. Every raindrop. Every storm. Tickles along his lover’s leg hairs, stomach and back. Sea and puddles. He becomes and undoes himself with every stroke of pen. The small spills, puddles and sticky wetness along his lovers side, spilling out from him, long hard moans. Every prayer of masturbation in his heart and his head. In his hands, the raindrops. In his hands, himself. In his hands, the tight hold around pens. The touching of his fingers slight and slender over lover’s skin. Around his and his lover’s dick.

Tapping away at keyboards. His keyboard, the sound of constant tapping on roofs and windows. Dripping into eyes. Cold over clothes. So the words and the water say, remove them. Naked under clouds, he is. Naked in the soul. He sits in his, and her jardín. Closed up tight so no one can see him out in the sun, out in the clouds. In the rain. Soaked. Writing. Touching himself. Like he was that boy again. Something new. Something terrible. He is that boy again gushing words and. His many dances. His many songs. His many deep moan prayers, offerings of cum up to Tláloc, to keep the rain coming. To keep the words falling from sky to his lips. Lovers from earth to palms and his hips. Fingers numb from all the typing. Tight tingles when inspiration comes, all forward flooding the forehead, gushing out heart and hand. Numb from the cold when he waits in rains for something and someone and some words to come.

His heart tapping time and rain deep down away, and into him. Out through palms and back in through mouths. Out through words. Back in again, water. He sits shivering in the puddles, shaking soul out from flesh. He is that boy again. He is that boy, staring up at her from the floor. Wet with himself. Dripping tears. Their loneliness together.

She taught him well, that love is only finding someone to sit alone with watching the rains.

Padre Pedro and the Water He Soaked Up.

2006-04-01T17:01:00.000-06:00

He thought he could swim across himself. To another side of this. Where he would wake up and Sun would not be God and Moon would not be Holy Spirit. He dreamed of before, when he was closer to Earth. His hands and feet and ears and lips were closer to Earth. Infant crawling, everything to his lips, everything to his tongue. And there was no “truth” then, only everything in front of you and behind the eyes, soft song like suffering youth.

Padre Pedro was 47 when it came. The rain. Inside the sacristy, sobbing something out of him. And it never stopped raining. The Church grew colder and paint began to peal. The smell of something dead began to moist and rot its way from under his robes. Under the white and the embroidered gold from Sisters in a monastery somewhere, somewhere.

He started praying to St. Somewhere instead of the sacraments and began to eat meat on Fridays to forget this endless lamenting. Padre Pedro grew into the statues and danced with the candles in his heart when the storms started and the rain came. But this wasn’t a flood. He was done with bible myths and crucifixions. He was done with the guilt for guilt for guilt. Of never knowing the left side of his hand or his penis, and always something like a plank in his eye, supposedly. He was done with being a blind, deaf, mute, beggar. He wanted to live. So one day, he started himself.

Over and over. This dream came. Of a beach on the other end of the universe with palm trees and people. Beautiful people walking all over, naked. He was never foolish enough to feel ashamed for this dream. To confess and raise high hell for something as beautiful as a dream. No, he was not that kind of priest. But he wasn’t one of the wishy-washy ones either. He knew the books inside out, and he knew where he stood. Somewhere between St. Peter and the dirt. Yes, somewhere between the raindrops and dust. Maybe he was ashes. Yes, he would be ashes mixed with spit and a little bit of sand smeared over his thigh.

This was where he was when the rain came. He couldn’t pray. There were no prayers left. He had accepted his fate. The fate of his world. He would be Padre Pedro forever and he was at peace with this when the rain came. So he started himself back to that place, started an ocean tide over his feet and the slightest cool breeze, and laughter. Laughter, like angels and hands and many fingers were what started the rain inside the Sacristy one Sunday night, before the sunset and the Church would slip from orange rainbow colored stain glass blurs on the walls, sliding into deep dark sleep, despite the candles that never slept and always had prayers in their smoke.

He thought one of his old prayers on reserve had started this, started the surging of water around him. But it was just a broken window, a tree branch through St. Selena’s eye, the patron saint of beautiful, young Tejana singers slain by something like Satan, an over protective father, or no one knows which conspiracy to stick with. Kind of like Jesús’s crucifixion, Madre Teresa and Princess Diana’s deaths all thrown into one brown beautiful, crossing over success story, gone sob story. Padre Pedro was sick of all the sadness in his Mexican sanctity. So he started to smile, started to sing Bidi Bidi Bom Bom in his head when the first cold drops began him. Pushed him up and open like a miracle, to interpretation, the water started smothering candles and caused all sorts of sins to not be forgiven and souls not to be saved, because those candles went out. But Padre Pedro was all smiles.

The sacristy, where the sacred objects were kept, chalices and candles, and the precious wine to blood the alter boys took swigs of when no one was looking, was where the rain started his thoughts. After the rectory and Sisters, some parishioners and a couple Sunday offerings, checks and a garage sale in the basement to save St. Selena’s eye, the stain glass was fixed, the cardboard removed, the Sacristy mopped and everything back to normal. Except some water had gotten into Padre Pedro’s shoes. And he remembered something about sand between his toes and holding His hand. Holding His hand in the sand, before all of this. Back to the beginning, a boyish fantasy before he sold his soul to Salvation, Eternal Silence, Certainty like security blankets. He told himself there was nothing to lament anymore, Bidi Bidi Bom Bom. Bidi Bidi Bom Bom all the way to the Lake. To the rocks. And the air had gotten colder since he’d last been there. Before, before, holding His hand there, scared of something.

Told himself he wasn’t swimming towards the eyes of that man like a vision in his dreams, that lover he longed for that looked a little like Jesús, standing on the sand, robe slightly open exposing brown body. Loafs of bread and thousands of fish for thousands of people waiting for him there, waiting for their marriage on those sands. He tried to tell himself he was just swimming away from the sadness, from the silence and suffering, the blood and tears and smell of incense always heavy in him, in his hear and hot behind his eyes, coals for burning incense always. He swam to the other side of himself and never came back. He swam, thinking there would be fish somewhere in the ice water of Lake Michigan in November. Where had Jesús gotten all those fish from then? Why were all the people naked if the water wasn’t warm? He swam. And never came back, never came back.

Don’t say, Amen. Don’t say, this is a prayer. Don’t sing a song. And don’t cry. Was his last sermon. Don’t die never having lived. Don’t die stuck in all this silence. There’s nothing sad about me. There’s nothing sad about me. So I’ll see you on the other side of yourself. The other side of suffering, is how he became Saint No One, No Where, patron saint of all those who can’t or never knew they could. Patron Saint of all those who are stuck, can’t swim, or think they’re not stuck and think they can swim. Swim despite the sinking sensation and the sound like world saying, No. Patron saint of Someday instead of Sunday, and the other side of what we think is sin, truth and water. To keep us believing in miracles, he turned the entirety of Lake's waters into whine when he started swimming, each breathe of water in let out deep violet sacrament of himself. Each breathe thinking, one day he'd wake up, a small boy-like man in his arms and this will be the way it was meant to be. Warm, floating in his arms kind of miracle.

Lake gave back the robes and scapular, his glasses and his left shoe to each rock that asked for it. And kept the rest of him for itself. An offering for Lake's prayers, miracles and sufferings into sleep, soft sounds and soothing ssssshhhh of waves, saying his saint name. Saint No One, No Where. Lake had enough water to give Padre Padro. To fill him. And love him, the way he had never been. Lake found him his place and held him safe there, a secret that no one would know.

I sit at the rock that hides his left shoe in its cracks. Looking out over Decembered ice Lake. And do not sing, do not cry, do not pray for Padre Pedro. I smile, a Bidi Bidi Bom Bom kind of smile. And Lake smiles back something like a saint.

Lost Word Latino

2006-01-24T15:10:00.000-06:00

He is the end of every unfinished sentence. That thought that lingers after read and lost Chicano poems. A book that holds you tighter than birth. Like almost but not quite, could have and should have. The fuss and frustration of cum. He is a thousand words wrapped in newspapers cus he can’t afford wrapping paper or cus he hates capitalism, consumerism and looks for every ism in the dictionary to make sure he doesn’t let any of those cucarachas escape. Like being back in the basement he grew up in. The thrill and dread of turning on kitchen lights at night. Black dots scurrying behind plates and under the toaster. The hunt, and satisfaction of destroying them, stomping them out, crushing their bodies under napkins like smashing stereotypes. The disgust. With himself and the world. The crunch of death and power. The oozing out of life under his fingers. Dirt and something sweet. Rough bitten dark under nails from digging.

The world is cold basements to him. He can only walk through basements, through life, he is always underground. He thinks this is why he is so pail. This is why he is shy and palms sweat when he doesn’t know you. He shivers in his sleep even in summer, always needs blankets.

No matter how much Ma complained to upstairs heat only came in short bursts and faint gusts, sucked out by thin windows wrapped in plastic, draped with old blankets that might have worked in Mexico but made no sense in Chicago basements. He’d come out of lukewarm showers dreaming of cement to seal off this dungeon, to trap in breaths. Thin body shaking, drops of water vibrating off light brown skin or maybe dark peach or orange. He gave up assigning colors to his blood like culture a long time ago. But he still wishes he was darker, so people wouldn’t be confused. And the sprouts of hair that scared him once. What white, Arab, brown, Spanish, Mestizo blood did those come from? Each hair a different peoples, growing thick until he could be proud of them all, strut them like feathers, curling dark brown proud. He thought he was supposed to shave them all off. Especially the ones that started growing everywhere but his face. The fear of becoming a man, a dog like cayotes. Something wild in his hands at night fumbling through sheets and sex and selves.

He hasn’t changed. He could be 19 or 35 today and he hasn’t changed. His body will always scare him like a thousand centipedes crawling on his neck. The never ending growing pricks of legs and antennae reaching out from under his chin, feeling the air around his neck, tasting the noise of his breath. A million pencil marks, quotes and comma’s he’s drawn on his face to make him a man, to secure his masculinity like his deep voice and uni-brow makes him Frida. If he could only be as potently Macha as she is painted, free of sex sometimes. He sees himself. Eyes can be without gender, can pull you into them and love you without questions, without uncertainty. Eyes like lips are what float around him everyday floats around him and speaks soft I love you’s. Lingering romances regardless of sense, sex or similitude. He dreams of moist breaths lust and longing, pull and push but never quite touch in his fantasy, in his reality too. He only likes the about to, the maybe, the holy shit is this happening. Not the afters. Not the happening. Just everything before. Like writing. But there’s no difference when you are what he does.

He writes. Like making love to himself has been the only way he could keep warm some nights and the rest of his life. He needs sex or bodies like blankets to write on. Even if just to kick them off in the middle of the night, jab his elbow in your side cus he doesn’t know how to be warm, only knows how to shiver like scribbling on the walls. When subconscious awakens and tells him he can finally be warm, tucked away deep in himself, his thoughts and dreams are the same, like persons he has come to know friends and lovers locked beneath his eyes. They are cold little people who complain to upstairs about the heat, but they love him. And keep the words coming. And keep him erect through every night, waking up to the longing of unfinished business. He is always cold and stiff.

He lives his life underground. Always watching seeds sprouting. The roots digging deeper. He swears he’d love to watch the flowers from above, watch them fertilize and fornicate. He is a gardener with no hands. But tactile and touches with eyelash and lips. He knows everything about reproduction, how to love, and the heart like giant acorns, hands like leaves, crunching withering mulch around him. He knows about dying. He knows the way the world looks through his mole eyes. The dark blinding way he writes at night, keys like feelers to touch the world, to see above and outside of himself. Hope like crushing insects with his bare fingers, the smear of souls, red and gold insides. A salamander on his shoulder, tells him with green eyes to someday venture out into the world. Out of himself. Out of his words. And to stop talking to worms.

The worms tell him he should dig to Mexico, spend the rest of life digging through all the pasts, back to where he came from. But he is too many sharp edges and bones. He is not the slender slimmy end of a penis. He cannot start himself over. He cannot un-orgasm back into his father. To see father’s flesh from inside. To finally remember father’s like name and feeling. What it means to be male. To follow eons of evolution and instinct. To be a real man. To be his father. To fertilize. To take himself back like words. To apologize for everything wrong in his blood like the first steps Cortez took into him. The fist penetrations of culture. The loss of pigment like tongues and temples. The first maggots that bit into conquistador eyes. The dead buried under churches. The splitting skulls of sacrilege and sanctity. Salvation and the sour breathe of the ancients. Before. Before. He is always digging deeper than the beginning.

There’s no end. There’s no beginning from the top to infinity. Only dirt. Only dark cold dirt. And he is warm in his basements. In the sense of dying. This warm release. Like the last word and period at the end of his book’s beginning and end without a middle. A worm that grows into two separate selves is his story, is his sentence with legs and heads and ends but no middles, no happenings, just before and maybe he’ll allow just one after. His ends. He hopes like crushing cucarachas will be happily dying so. Beyond the cold. Beyond the words. And so. This is how you write and this is how to breath and this is how he shivers in his sleep. How you will never read his work. His own words will never know his name.

Self-Conceptions.

2005-12-07T15:22:00.000-06:00

Born out of wedlock, I am bastard-child. Like most kids, the story of my conception, slowly realized concepts of sex, and then the worst concept of my own conception took time to reveal. Took time for Ma to admit to me one night. “I had sex with him to prove to myself I could be with a man,” when she finally told me where I came from. “To change. To be straight.”

I am my mother’s self-denial. Her inescapable, unacceptable sinful self. I am the groping hands of a Cuban man in the half-light of 80’s porn. I am the pot in the air. “He popped in a tape and we smoked.” Porn and pot are my blood. Seamen from the Isle, my father to my mother, Gulf of Mexico. Something sticky and unsettling about everything in me, explained through my conception. My mother makes mistakes. Everything happens for a reason. I was born to save her, she would always say. “You saved me.”

I pulled the virgin robe over her, tied the rosary to her hands and bent her head in prayer. I forced myself like Jesus in her womb, and she had no choice but to bite her soul and bear this savior. Humbly hushed the secrets of origins and pasts, replaced with prayers. She did have sex with him to turn herself straight. I was born to turn her straight. Save her soul and silence.

“Who’s my father, Ma ? What’s his name.” But, I never remembered every time she told me. I never needed to know. Never needed him. He and where I came from was a revealing truth that would change me. Only and not only a fact. Like learning the inner workings of history and culture in my Mexi-Cathlican blood, the influences of eons on spinning earth, motivations of masses of people, religions, politics and governments intertwined economics. My father and Cuba. “I didn’t want him in your life, he wasn’t worth having in your life.” My birth certificate says “not worth it” is his name. Truth against the unknown, untold, secrets. Knowing now is all that matters. Telling and letting go. Giving and learning. Rising with our truths, where we came from, to where we are going.

The truth is I am proud of every bit of my existence. I am not ashamed of where I came from. Ma, you should never have been ashamed of yourself. But, if the Saint-Sisters and the world hadn’t condemned you, if self-hatred hadn’t driven you to his dark apartment, his Cuban arms, I wouldn’t exist. I was born not of love but self-hatred and doubt. This is the only truth. The truth of paradox and amnesia. And now I radiate and teach you self-love and certain-uncertainty, Ma, the universe. There are no if only’s. If only I wasn’t born gay, if only I wasn’t born poor, if only. There is only the truth of all these different meanings floating against each other. The collision that we are all born from, deep within our mother’s wombs. And we are alive. And this is all that matters, Ma. This. This is all we can truly know. Reaching out to hold each other’s hands. This is all we need. To know.

And your bible says, Adam ate from the tree of knowledge. Knowing is knowing you can never know. Is the ultimate fear. Is where sin comes from? What does knowing taste like? Do you taste sin's truth like a bloody palm, a blunt to your lips, his hard Cuban kiss, like breaking. Knowing like Eucharist or electric shock’s sour tongue. Pray your prayers to know. I’ll be content with books to read and write like prayers. Knowing like love. Knowing like family or friends. Knowing like secrets to find. Searching hands in the half-light of 80’s porn and pot. Searching like somewhere deep in you, Ma, searching like womb and warmth. Knowledge. I pain you truth like birth from unknowing to now. To know you, so you can know me. Just wanting your family and love to know you once. Know you true like love, like family. Like beginning. I am: was conceived answer to your prayers. I am: your knowing, I am: what will never let you know: An answer to a question: If only? We could know.

What Granma Says, es La Lay.

2005-11-17T18:56:00.000-06:00

Granma’s smile. That sarcastic, bitter kind of hiss she tongues and out the corner of her eyes brushes you away saying, “Sacase a bañar.” Her joking dismissal of everything not Catholic and in Spanish. Shoots down smart-aleck, know-it-all backtalk, cool kid tongues, soaps out English bad words, and inserts Spanish ones. “Carajo, habla en español, en la escuela ingles, en la casa español.” You always cut us down with the same set of sarcasm, same sass and harsh sound, just not in English, “solo español.” To be Mexican Chicago, migrated your Mexico barrio to Logan Square, apartments along the way to the house on Artesian, and then move back to Mexico, run away from the cold. Old bones need to burry where they were seeded.

Dismissal of everything not Catholic and Spanish, but learned and keep the prayers and worships, the Word in Latin. Always still cover your head at church. You are the Eve that sold Mexico to Cortez, so cover your head. She is Indian skin and eyes of water. “Don’t drink the water.” Always, “No tomas el agua.” We learn to keep ourselves from self and earth. Industry and America taught your Mexico how to suck everything, last drop of the soil like long Indian braid hair and corn husk. Suck everything, last drop out of glass bottled Coca-Cola collections on shelves of new many tiendas taking over your smoke filled streets. Coca-Cola for water to drink in commerce, consumer society, capitalism in your third world. When does priest preach that message against that sin? Then I’ll go to church too. Dedicated walk from church to home, home to church to make community. Walking quick, cutting through the noise and smoke, keep head covered.

Abuela's breath. Air out your kitchen. Heat of your hands like tops of stoves. Cover yourself to keep warm. Wrap up tight, socks and wool skirts you made yourself. A blouse you made from a flower print fabric you made the curtains with the same. You match your kitchen. Frilly apron always first thing on after prayer. Prayer like sweater to keep you warm, keeps your arms from falling off. Sun rises with your dawn, yawn me new day bendiciones before I can leave the house. You bring in the sun push those curtains aside with psalms and platitudes. Feed the birds. Kill the chickens. Cook our favorites and love our smiles. Don’t serve me Granma. I can serve myself. Like you say, “¿No tienes manos? Haz lo tu mismo. Eres Capaz.” Yes I am. So I do. You taught me to do, so you can sit and not always serve us, me, men, daughters and grandkids. I teach myself how, to teach you to not have to.

The rough of soft skin, something like dough you’ve kneaded your arms into flabs of used to be strong, working class arms melted, cleaning bathrooms and cooking for nuns and doing their dishes, laundry, on your knees scrubbing the floors is prayer. Learn and unlearn the points of Catholicism. Brown here and brown there and still cleaning up the white people’s messes. The earth they’ve shat in the very water to drink. “No tomas el agua,” you always taught me. So I don’t. I drink horchata and boiled tap only if a have to. Coca-Cola, agua con sal, un tea con avena cuando estoy enfermo. Your brown flavored remedies, kept pressed leaves of all kind, collections of medicines in your purse, wrapped in napkins leaves and petals, magic you condemn and practice. Tissue when we sneeze, keep quiet in church, en la casa de dios. “But Granma, you can’t keep god in just one house.” Faith like knickknacks you’ve clutter collected compulsive disorder on your selves. Faith like leaves to heal everything stuffed in your purse. Teach me to appreciate thorns like you do.

Assembly line responses to the world. Rote readings to the world and ways to condemn your daughters, where did you go wrong? Self pitying, Catholic guilt Granma. Tight hold on your house like espoons made de plata. The taste stuck in my mouth. Missmatched rummage sale, found in the dumpster, back of the house alley collection of chairs in your kitchen. Assembly line day of family and candles. Tiendas and slight drop of sweat dripping down face, stuck in your eye. The kitchen is the warmest place in our house. It’s where we all go to keep warm these Chicago winters. Scarves and sweaters you pull us tight, still holding espatula, when the boiler breaks.

Tamales for Christmas and my birthday. Watch you pull the chicken from the bones, blood on frill apron. The chicken heads somewhere buried in the yard, or did it slip into the soup? The dog, named Taco, chewing a bone. A feather stick to your skirt. Poor chicken, never had a chance, and your pajaritos cantando-ing in their hand made cages, many colors and kinds of canaries, an egg in a nest, the spell of blood broth. Mix the mole. Chocolate never washed off your finger tips. Assembly line at Marshal Fields, Godiva chocolates you never tasted, never touched your tongue.

Only smell of your chocolate skin incense. Lingering spiced air at misa, your kitchen. Where you create yourself, tight yourself around rosary and beaded prayers, bead pray bead, day and shroud, cover your head and keep warm. Factory your day to keep us warm. This is your law. To keep us Catholic and speaking Spanish. Your creed like Apostles. Hot tongues, tacos de lengua. Tight our heads and hands on like dolls. Twist and snap us together just right. Practice what we preach. Actions and words. Sew up my frayed end pant legs when they get to baggy, draggin ‘n on the floor, under my shoes. Call me “cantinflas” Complain about my long hair. Dress us for misa, tell me to pull up pants, tuck in shirt, walking up cold stone steps. Pull heavy door, keep winter out the church. Dip fingers in ice holy water. Sprinkle and sign of the cross. I wonder what the water tastes like, many hands and washed away sins. What does sin taste like? Gum stuck at the bottom of the pool.

No tomas el aqua, granma. Don’t drink. Drink.

Last Word Latina, II

2005-11-09T11:38:00.000-06:00

Often confused for a white girl walking down Western. She glares at everyone, defying them, enticing them, beckoning them all to define her, confine her into one box and packager her as a gringa, as a yuppy, as the gentrifying white girl that she isn’t, coming to take away all the brown in this city and erect condos in a grave yard city of used to be culture and community. But she is not white girl 'cause she's Puerto Rican, right? But she is white girl 'cause she talks "right" and isn't curly hair and dark dark brown for you, right? But she's not white girl 'cause she grew up Chicago, Spanish, and Humboldt Park, right? But she is white girl 'cause light skin means Spanish blood and Europe and money, right? She is not white girl for you today, though you’d like to turn her into one because she listens to punk rock and indie bands. She listens to so much more, she is an island and country and world of music and words and ideas and beings that you could never comprehend. She is whatever you want to paint her light brown skin to be.

At the Puerto Rican parade she is fire red eyes burning through the chest of a drunk man in the moon light. He is pressing up on her. Telling her she has a nice ass, how’d she get “that Puerto Rican ass” and oh she’s fine. How’d she get that Puerto Rican ass? As if her ass could be the rounding off of ocean and earth, the scent of suffering and smiling, migrations and identities mixed and confused slavery, vulnerable and seductive violation, governments, religion and politics of an island so far away. And sex, all about sex and eroticizing everything about her, even her short haircut that looks like a boy’s for his fantasies. He is drunk and you can see the center of her earth steaming out her eyes, molten hot core, her being, every sense of dignity, indignity, right and righteousness erupting from her clenched teeth and eyes. She blinks a calm dismissal at him and motions to tell him off with her fist.

And now she isn’t Puerto Rican ass anymore. He looks at her light brown face and through his drunken eyes thinks she’s Asian. “What the fuck you doing here Chinita?” Dis the Puerto Rican parade not China Town. Get the fuck outa Humboldt Park.” And now her fire storm is swirling, swarming brush fire destroying Chicago for a second time. She has always had a bad temper. Tonight there was enough alcohol and empanadas stuffed in her to let out the worst in her. And she steps up to him. She becomes years of oppression, of woman not speaking against the piercing eyes of men like this. She becomes a movement, a liberation unto herself. And she raises herself off the ground. She is not a tiny girl anymore. She grows wings and horns and calls upon the spirits of ancestry, the dead of her world to eat this little man. Devour him within his own lust and ignorance. Turn him into his liquor breath vapor, to evaporate with an offering y un baño. She washes herself of his sticky words, wipes away his stench and sex. And she is stronger than he is.

We pull her away from him before this becomes something worst. We try to calm her and distract her. We pull her away from him before she erupts, implodes and we have to explain to the city that we aren’t feminist terrorist planting bombs at parades to prove a point. We aren’t always indignant and militant. We don’t hate these men or every man. And we pull her away wishing she could have hit him. Wishing we weren’t all cowards. Wishing we didn’t have to fear for her safety and ours and the possibility of inciting a race and class and sex and everything riot in the middle of a nice summer night.

We’re back at her apartment and she’s a yuppy to this confused neighborhood for you and everyone again. And we listen to Celia Cruz and and then some Sleater Kinney and eat some left over chicken wings and drink Coronas. Her fire smothered once again. We should have let her go off on him. We should have let her speak loudly that she is not an object or an ideal, she is not the embodiment of anything other than herself. Why must she be the revolution, why must she be everything that the world isn’t, all the time. Why can’t she just go to a parade, laugh and not be aware of every influence and consequence and negotiate between her class, sex and race for you.

Those words stuck in her head as we drink the rest of the night away, trying to forget ourselves and the world. “Get out of Humboldt Park.” Get out of her Puerto Rican self. Get out of the home you were raised in. Get out of your sex and skin and education. Get out of your class. Get out of your orientation. Get out of your music and books and friends. Get out of your ideas. Get out of yourself, your hair, your eyes, your ass. Get out of this world because we don’t know where to put you. What part of this city to segregate you’re kind to. What kind to?

She sleeps and has a nightmare about grass around her on fire rising up over her. And the ocean is just out of her reach. And her reflection is out of reach. And the fire smells like a drunkard, and whispers, “Get out. Get out. Get out, now.” But she can’t and she screams.

Last Word Latina

2005-11-06T14:05:00.000-06:00

Today is last word Latina who personalizes everything. Opinionated on everything, and argues about things that no one is really arguing over. When the other person isn’t arguing just saying something different or trying to lay the debate she made up to rest to continue the lecture or discussion.

Needs a pill to fix this she can’t seem to keep from ignoring. Over exhaustion and stress she piles up sleep deprivation like her dept for school and living. Whose parents disowned her for being a lesbian and deciding to go to college. And they haven’t decided which they’re more offended by. Her sex or her leaving so many sisters and dishes. For education over kitchens. And here she is so eager to invite me over to her independence and room in a coop and cook and laugh and not be reminded.

Only afraid of father and god, or god the father, or her father, god? She forgets now. It’s been so long. Took care of god by becoming an atheist. But can’t stop believing in fathers, like anthropomorphic mythological owners of everything and the future with thick belts and loud roaring snores that make the thunder she can’t sleep because of.

Quiver in Latina voice, pinches, pricks soft cracks and sings sighs. Is a moan to be a Mexican girl. And moan takes two vowels to makes its own sound. voice. sex. she writes without gender. Today was not loud in class because she wasn’t even listening when she tried to because today was so much poetry, thought out of fingers and obsessions. Desperation today wants this book she is to be written and shelved. Burned and boiled. Eaten. Shitted out and on. Story to run from blood like stabbing, eyes out ears to let go pulled and punched back in kind of book. Today is aggravating hiccup poetry and heart slow up esophagus. A cough to wheeze grind throat and air and hiss and choke over. Her eternal in-betweens. Work and trying not to faint. Keep it together.

Notebook in her chest lets the writing get thicker when it needs to be closed shut, wrapped with wires to keep it from bursting confetti of printed pages, bloated binding with words in life boat papers escaping sinking stories, coma and quote people jumping from burning binding, consonant children running from perfect lines, demonic boys as girls as boys howling out isles from first gruel communion church where she doesn't even try to compete with that word. Echo hollow church thunder tortillaed in her. Content at the end of day with microwave veggie wraps, empty thoughts and glass she stains her windows peace and power. No doubt debate pressing in her dark comforting quiet.

Por El Grito, Canto We Can't Hear

2005-10-26T10:19:00.000-05:00

Canto: This is the song. for when my Latino Literature class and I dread. that moment brown teacher points to us. have to read out loud the page in front. parentheses between the words Latina/o kids (in college even) can’t read and stumble over. let fry and clank, mash up our bean rice corn teeth mouth tongues. on syllables, can’t pronounce strange long words we weren’t taught in sucky CPS. insecure about reading. and always soft voice. too fast and staring at page. for few awkward forever seconds. when don’t know the word “precarious” in poem. paralyzing pressure affects silence. when you know s/he’s perplexed. know I've skipped word and sentence doesn't make sense now. you have to start over. everyone's waiting. and I can feel the weight of moment in your heart. moment that when it happens to all of us. just skip it. skip school. skip chances. and skip our voice. truth skips us. and rights and futures skip our children. and we begin to loose our Spanish to this silence too. and we don’t even understand ourselves anymore.

Grito: Por los que no entienden, y por los que si. Por “no speake ingles” y por “for why you go to de parque.” make you switch your soul and syntax, circumstance, religions, to fit our heathen history and make you worship our feathered panthered sunned browned gods. hairy hairless tongue your way. out of this one. you can suck it. out nopales y chile thorns up top your teeth. moist and molar mole mouth until you cry. ‘cause your children are talking words you can’t comprehend. and hate and love this place you’ve been dragged to. ‘cause back home is need and you’re always giving. clutter of useless phrases you’ll have to memorize. and agonize. we’ll roast lengua de white men, conquistadores in our blood dinner. when Mexico is taken back and we force you to wash our dishes and take your minimum of minimum wage to the currency exchange. in country you can’t or wouldn’t want to claim anyways. gritando with our loud-ass rancheros down Western and Astro vans con la Virgen on spare tire. grita, the sound of success when it’s a brown girl as president. through college y el movimiento. took kids y abuelitos al capital to cry. and brown girl presidenta just gave us Mexico without a war. all because of words. were proud to fumble with.

Ratoncita Cousin.

2005-10-25T10:48:00.000-05:00

Ratoncita Cousin.

Adriana is a dark skin and attitude like her father girl. She is the oldest, smacking Frankie over the head but watching out for while giggling and loving little Alexis, her sweet surprise little sister. With a thick head of Puerto Rican should have been curly but is straight and black Mexican oil hair that is long and long and thick as a horsetail she wears in one tough ponytail down her back for Alexis to braid small knots in and call them pretty and for Frankie to pull and swing from her like a Tarzan tree trunk older sister.

When we played as kids, she was always the Jasmine and I was always the Aladdin. She was a beautiful child and has grown up to be a beautiful young woman. But she is the type of girl that knows she is beautiful. Popular and full of spunk and plays soccer with boys because it’s fast and fun, not for the boys that fawn over her, but notices that too so she is always laughing.

Got her period at 11 or 12. So early it scared the woman in the family, speculating and suspecting the hormones in all the 2% and American cheese she loved eating as a kid (we called her ratoncita) to be the reason for her early thrust into maturity. Something in the Indiana water turns brown girls that should have been raised in Chicago with her other brown cousins or something in brown blood that made her always older than she was.

I found her diary sitting on the sofa one day, not knowing what it was, opened it and the page said something about dry humping on her boyfriends couch. Closed it quick. Growing up fast girl. Remember she is 15 and I was just about the same age the first time I fooled around, dry anythinged with anyone. I worry that she will be like her mother, like all our mothers, and get pregnant at a young age, unmarried, surprised and alone. But then I realize that all of our mothers raised us fine. If all of our mothers hadn’t been careless, or passionate, wild and unruly young woman, none of us would have ever been born. And she is laying on the couch with a baby that is premature, small druggy-baby—tubes and incubators and blinking lights to measure the measures—her mother is babysitting and Adriana is on the couch sleeping with this warm small thing nestled on her chest.

Finger Out Our Demons.

2005-10-23T04:28:00.000-05:00

my biggest lonely is a demon. makes want so many bodies. must Gabriel and smite my sex with swords. shove aside all the silly stripes and spots. sex crosses eyes. bends my knees in sultry spinning slow and up worship. his body and movement is constant and change is my new religion. truth is under microscope his eyes. love is when we've sexed the sex out of us. and still need each other. is undeniable reason for being. is only to find one. find and forget about looking for big white clouds to save us. 'cause we can save ourselves. with a little bit of love his head on my chest and the hairs. were shy to show each other. confessions and looking up at crucifix. just want to run hands down line they must have methodically chiseled that v down his white pelvis that stops where cloth you know shouldn't be there. is covering up natural and right and real and something to be proud and praise and want to pull. all of that Jesus into your Eucharist. palms open. mouth kneeling tongue. out to put teeth in wine and all prickles up leg. wrapped around this worship. on the alter sacrifice and spasm, pain and push, and pain and moan, and push and take. and this is where we come from. this is where all the demons are baked and broken.

My Mother as Christ, Self-Crucifixion.

2005-10-19T22:19:00.000-05:00

Crucifying herself with one hand free to raise me and the other driving the stakes through her palms. Where I crawled out of her embrace and where Tuesday slipped in to encourage Jesus saves and every Sunday morning together, push the iron in a little closer to the wood splinters splitting love. Two lesbians, one black the other brown, in the back of church sad singing and hoping. An agonizing confusing worship that still fills them something I can’t, won’t understand anymore. She still sends me little pamphlets about prayer and the New White Pope and the Passion of Christ and the Dangers of Evolution. Always asking if I’m praying and when I’m praying and reminders to go to church and pray. She’s more concerned with what I believe than the topics I try to talk to her about Latina writers and ethnocentric attitudes and anthropology and so many big words and big ideas. I can see her proud-of-me eyes sweeping big words aside and butting in the conversation I was only having with myself. Her eyes say, “praise God for your fortunes and bless you for the future,” and then I give up trying to talk about what matters to me with her. And we sit in the restaurant, couch, hallway, bus, forever not talking, but wanting to hear something of each other’s heartbeats. Crawl back into each other where we all came from place. Where words don’t get in the way, and there’s no need for to worship worry words here. I try to figure out why I write this endless and why this story must be. The meditations like prayers, each one too deeply personal to edit down. Write more and more, remembering specific persons, places, and experiences in this, live to make sense of her life and ours and everyone’s. This eternal constant. Whisper, “prayer praying prayer praying prayer.” I was born to save her. She was crucified to save me. She wasn’t born with this pen to drive into her palms like I do. She took the cross, forever nailed feet in place, in faith and condemnation from sour Saint sisters. Her tired worn down bone and blood dripping feet, standing security guard, worn out callus stand and sit down of church and running in circles grinding knees, heavy wood family on her bent broken back, tense neck and crown of thorns. She took the cross. So I could kneel and start new religions.