I Had A Dream Once Where Jacob Elordi Tried To Kill Me
I had recurring nightmares of men chasing me
Pretty boys—tall dark and handsome with set jaws and glints in their eyes—
Men I knew—pastors, fictional characters, construction workers, boys as close to me as brothers—
They’d be sweet first sometimes,
Ducking into me
So normally
Astroturf green grass
School gymnasium
Swimming pool
In the woods on a cool afternoon
Dim corner of a wedding of people whose faces I couldn’t see
Coming after me
Behemoths of men
So fast and so angry
Recurring
Twisted time loops
Crushes said they loved me and then they tried to kill me
I dreamt of men i’d never met prying me apart
Digging their fingers fist-deep into the bones of me
And pulling out my innards like it was a fucking chore
I’d try to dodge and leap
I fought
Throwing nonsensical items—plush baby doll, knives that didn’t seem to do any damage at all—
I was always too slow
And they were always too fast.
Condé Nast, Colombia, Church Hill Tennessee,
I would latch onto lucid names of places
And avoid them in the waking world like the plague
I could never win
Somehow, someway, they’d always get the upper hand and I'd always end up limp and dead
Men I knew my entire life
Chased me, choked me,
I always tried to talk, tried to bitch and shout my way out
But they always just pressed a hand to my mouth and held me down
Half-tear on the edge of my cheek and a hushed scream
I would wake up prepared to hit something
I held the intrinsic thought
Somewhere deep and locked
That every man in the world was trying to kill me
Stockholm Or, Pulp Fiction / The Passenger
I knew you loved me when you shot him dead
We were born to die
You, with your cigarette habit and carhartt jacket
Me, lettin’ people walk all over my body
And, I was standing there, in that diner
Crying like some lost thing
And you looked at me
And I swear I was the only thing you believed
Fragile, you’re fragile, you told me
Threaded my fingers through your hair (hell, you could kick me down the stairs)
And we were just two, laying in that motel room
And I bandaged your hands when they got bloody
And I’ll stain my pants with the hydrogen peroxide as I hold your hand on my thigh,
Trying to divine, trying to rectify,
I was trying so hard to make it right
Rampage, massacre, murder—
Just two lost souls in that diner
Felt the rawbone sickness of your mouth
And the undercurrents when you pulled me in
And you will lick a strip along my chest and
down
my neck
And I will ignore the pistol on the side table
Baby, baby, you said and I swear I think you’ll fuck me even when I’m dead
And your shotgun snapped back into place
(there was so much blood on your face)
And I smelled the fry oil and the gunpowder and the killing floor
Barrel to my face
And I was just standing there, staring at you
So you snagged me by the shoulder
And dressed me in your clothes
And we just drove
I tried to ask you why
But you just gripped my thigh
And in the neon light
You wiped the slaughter off me
And told me to breathe
Wearing your old Motörhead t-shirt
Lay down in the backseat and drink a fifth of whiskey
You’re so good to me baby, I said,
Even though there was a part of me wishing on a star for you to drop dead
And it ain’t right for you to look like an angel when you’re killing something
You got sad fucking eyes and in my dreams when I stare up at the sky you grab my thighs
And hold me like it’s all you know how to do right
Choke me up against the wood panel,
And I’ll say sorry until I feel sick
Until I make you sick, until your tongue is thick and your rawhide skin is ripped
Robbing convenience stores
Like for you it’s some chore
You get me my favorite candy and I swear I watch you finally breathe
When, I bite
as you drive
And at night, in the backseat of your worn down 1970 Chrysler
And in the wreckage of our trail
I will pick the shrapnel of my love out from your wrists
And I will kiss your broken fist
And I will pretend like this isn’t mutilated, mutated, and downright sick
And you said, I love you, I love you.
And I dug my nails into you because it was all I knew how to do
Coedine cocaine coca cola poison fucking in the backseat
(and I will try not to think of brain matter and skull fragments and the way you taste like salt and violence)
Killing’s all you seem to know how to do,
Is it foolish to want you?
You’re just so soft, you said and you pressed your head against my chest
And I swear it was the first time you learned how to rest
Held you like glass—like I was wrapping my mouth around the barrel, like you were you were going to scream and then beg me and say that you’re sorry for being so mean—
And it hurt so bad
And I knew I wanted you the way a knife wants a wound
And even if you kill me by the roadside,
baby,
you and I
were born to die
Goldberg Variations
What’s it like to almost be eaten, ?
asks my friend
When I tell her about the bear i met on my front porch
Just a girl standing in front of a boy (bear)
asking (frozen for a moment then screaming as high as i possibly could / the kind of way people do when they’re dying) him to love (not rip me to shreds) her
I can say this with certainty,
I reply
That there was a moment when that bear and I locked eyes
And I didn’t see the flashes of my little life
I saw its
That is to say
Hibernation
Weaning
Salmon dreaming
Et al. my screaming
Perhaps it was the normalcy of violence,
In my hood (rotten trailer park with pine trees and ravens that repeat the word hello until they grow old) people died ugly and nasty
Drunken neighbor yelling at my family (because ¾ of us are mexican we will never be free / my mama doesn’t seem to understand why this kills me)
So when the bear and i
—that is to say my premature death and early bedrest—
locked eyes
There was an absence
A moment, when it and i were just two things put on this earth, unfortunately crossed by open doors and unwashed salmon coolers
4 AM: The Night Before An Exam,
I draw everyone i’ve ever loved
charcoal, pencil
composition paper
I draw my father in goodwill wearing a sombrero
and his mother’s smile
I can’t seem to get his eyes right
(were they always this bright)?
I draw close friends
1 through 7
I need to be thinking about catarrhines, and locomotions of spines,
and stereoscopic eyes
I draw Darcy,
in our old bingo club classroom
wearing a happy birthday! headband
from the box of dollar store prizes
I still have the pink plastic duck on the dash of my car and Sophia has the other—what are the strategies of a mother
against infanticide?
what are the stages of a primate’s life?
I draw Uri,
who i swear, acts like they’ve known me since i was three
sitting in a school chair
pom pom hat pulled over their face
and i laugh so hard i nearly make myself dead by way of falling out of my seat and hitting my head
(just like i did when i took the photo)
I draw Sarah,
at the county fair
green t-shirt and gold glasses and red hair
I draw my brother and my sister and her children,
in the San Juans
only two and twelve years apart but i swear my niece and nephew
look so young compared to us siblings
Gene flow -
also known
as admixture is the process of allele frequencies changing as a result of
of interbreeding or the movement of a population to the other
I draw a strange picture of my mother,
bike helmet and fleece vest and a face without rest
(no wonder i left the nest)
there’s a vain page
full of self-portraits
borderline ego-whorish
why do i have so much tit in this pic? damn look at that waist and that pretty incongruent face—allopatric speciation is the division of a species as the result of geographic barriers resulting in different phenotypes for the
new population
I draw a series of crushes
from the mind
(and i can still remember the way Zac pushed his thigh against mine)—platyrrhines’ root is derived from platyrrhini meaning ‘broad nosed’
I draw the people i don’t talk to anymore
drifted or mutilated
something in it’s faded.
Do you remember when we were going down Race St in your car and then—
The Siamang is an endangered arboreal gibbon native to Asia. NWM (New World Monkey) or OWM (Old World Monkey)?
I scribble down beloved faces
looking for traces
See the beauty
—what we define as beauty is screwed, because i swear it's the catch in the light or the way Sophia's eyes looked so bright cradling an opossum or my sister in 2002 looking like a fool—
in all of them
And i think to myself it’s a real shame
that half of them
deride, deny, despise
themselves
When i draw you,
I am saying i love you the only way
i know how to do
I am begging you
to see yourselves the way I do
Parabolic Dental Arcade
I am trying to write a poem about oranges
About gnashing teeth and how it feels for someone to love you
even when you look primally stupid
humans’ jaws are characterized by
a u-shaped parabolic curve
dental formula 2:1:2:3
this, in many respects sets us apart from the rest of
the hominidae
I am trying to write a poem about desire
rind, juices, sticky flesh
runs down my chin
obnoxious tongue darts out to lick it off
dental arcade refers to the:
curved rows of teeth
on the upper and
lower jaw
I am trying to write about the feeling of being hunched over the kitchen sink
tearing apart the rawhide skin
fingernails sunk in
feeling like you’re taking part in some hideously lustful sin
unlike some apes,
our teeth do not have spaces
to sharpen our canines
despite this, at 162 psi
humans have got one hell of a bite
I am trying to write about the abstract feeling of hunger
about gnawing and wanting and longing
about citrus and seeds and pulp and spit and incisors
and the way it feels to be desired—
no, I am trying to write about
fucking
oranges
Armada
sometimes I wonder what my grandfather saw on that battleship,
port cities doused in napalm
Saigon set on fire
he was just an electrical engineer,
my mother says
he never saw combat
what did you see out there?
when I close my eyes hard enough,
I can picture myself standing beside him
watching people die
along the shoreline
you’ve got two options, son: join the army or the navy
so he shipped out
(he reads Catch-22 in bootcamp but I don’t know it til he wanders into my
house
while I’m reading it on the couch)
there’s things he’ll never say
(is he scared in the clear light of day?)
i’m old enough to know he’s no hero
i’m also old enough to know not to bring up Vietnam or the words bomb or sarong
(i learn this when I am ten and sitting on the backporch waiting for him to stop screaming the house
down
over a
crossword)
what did you see out there?
I see old photos of him sometimes,
hidden in the wallpapered corners of my mother’s dresser
holding my grandmother (and all her rage is in my mother now)
there ain’t no light in his eyes
and i wonder where it died
Water-Toothed, My Brother Slips Into A Stream
Salmon go home to die
I saw you there, in the stream
You were so young there,
Fish rotting on the riverbank
Meadow-child
Three-trickster-ravens
Picking out the maggots
Their eggs,
You stepped around them so carefully,
Like separating salt from water
Skin from blood
The living dead,
swam all around you
red-backed
and hook-jawed
but you didn’t seem to care
And you are destined to die in the place of your birth
Because this is the place that made you ugly
And this is the place that made you angry
And this is the place that made you soft
And the salmon will always be there to rot.
A Poem For The Burnt Out Belarusian Houses
this is the poem,
for the 628 belarusian villages
burned alive
matchstick-frame houses
with their people inside
while they watched you die
they led you to the square
and slaughtered you there
this is the poem,
for the grandmother
laid living dead in the street
why bother, says one to the other
they killed you with laughter
this is the poem,
for the mother
who tried to push her child
out a window
clinging to your shirt,
wailing, your babies
died screaming
this is the poem,
for the father
trying to shove his way
out of the flaming barn
they shot at your feet when you wouldn’t listen
beating your fists bloody on the door
this is the poem,
for the boy
turned partisan
the one who escaped
hidden in the trees,
a rifle over his knees
he no longer dreams
This is a poem,
for the children of the Khatyn massacre
that is to say,
the ghosts
left behind
in the belarusian countryside
immolated
for nothing.
The Women in the Trees
Let me tell you the story,
of the women in the trees
A girl,
draws water from a well
the forest, all temperate and windy in the mountains draws back
her rebozo sticks to her arms
clay pot jabs against her waist
things are done differently in the mountains
water-slick hands
dirt and masa beneath her nails
she's only thirteen
that's old enough
A grandmother,
older than the revolution
tucked herself away during the Cristero
old enough to remember when men dangled from the trees,
sits
frowning
kneading at stone
mortar and pestle
push and pull
there was no electricity, yet, not in the mountains
The girl,
her granddaughter
pours the water into the adobe lavadero
splashes her skirt a little
no running water yet either in the mountains
The grandmother,
kneading
cross dangling from her neck
on her knees, penitent flattening masa
tells her
to go get more
everything is done by hand here in the mountains
The girl,
chipped clay pot in hand
twin braids,
the way her mother used to do
does as asked
twisting and pulling
rope stinging her calloused palms
she's only a child
but she's got hands
like she's been working since she was born
A man,
wanders out of the arboles
swaying trees that break apart for him
he calls out to her
a glint in his eye
a friend, he calls himself
The girl,
she hoists up her pot
and her skirts
and tells him that he's gone the wrong way
preparing to run
The man smiles,
and descends upon her
you want this, he says
i want you, he says
it's love at first sight, he says
and wraps his arms around her
she screams
she runs up the hill
fast feet can only do so much
against a man
he catches her
the clay pot shatters
it was a different time, but we knew it was bad even then, in the mountains
he hurts her
simply
angrily
she claws and screams and bites and cries
jagged edges of clay digging into her back
The man,
wild-eyed
blood-hungry
sinks his knife
over and over in her chest
until she is more wound than girl
The grandmother,
runs down the hill
down the ranchero steps
past the chickens
past the trees
flour stuck to her fingers
shrieking the name of her child's child
he stabs her
forty-two times
they only have open-casket funerals in the mountains
her arms
are covered in defensive wounds
grandmother-skin all worn and sagged
sliced open
to the bone
her daughters,
away
what a tragedy, whispers the chismosa
stand quiet
at the viewing
grandmother and granddaughter, abuelita y nieta, laid out like wounded angels
takes two days before the viewing is over
before the Church says it's alright to bury them
their refuge is in heaven now
The man,
flees
before he can be strung up
there are no police in the mountains
The daughters,
hear
whispers,
convocations,
allegations,
of the man who did it
a slip of tongue
a twist of fate
word of mouth
he who hurts is here
this was how we did things in the mountains
braided hair, just like their mother's mother
knives belted to their waists
poised low in the trees
lying in wait
as the man,
walking home
along the dirt road
gnawed on a nectarine
pit and juices jutting against his teeth
daughters,
mother-blood hot and angry
descended upon him
his nectarine, laid in the red dirt, an afterthought
as they drew into him
and cut