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I am thrilled to share the official news - my latest poetry collection, Moonlight and Monsters, will be published this year by Gnashing Teeth Press. Many thanks to editor Karen Cline-Tardiff and congrats to my fellow writers.
Synopsis
These poems are divided into three sections, Moonlight, Monsters, and General Weirdness. They are poems that find a home in the fantastical, in the celestial, in magic and mysticism, in indigenous beliefs, in mythology, and in folklore. In examining things that are considered strange, other, or even monstrous, they strive for something relatable and universal. They look for the human stories beneath the sideshow, a way into and back out of the labyrinth.
These poems are divided into three sections, Moonlight, Monsters, and General Weirdness. They are poems that find a home in the fantastical, in the celestial, in magic and mysticism, in indigenous beliefs, in mythology, and in folklore. In examining things that are considered strange, other, or even monstrous, they strive for something relatable and universal. They look for the human stories beneath the sideshow, a way into and back out of the labyrinth.
Here is a sample poem from the collection:
1. Catechism
I discovered masturbation when I was three. My mother caught me and slapped my hand,
told me I mustn’t ever do that again. When I was five, I spied on an older cousin
in the shower. When I was seven, my catechism teacher told me that touching myself
was dirty and displeasing to the Lord. Well, Lord, I remember thinking, this is where you and I
part ways. The nuns, also, were quick to rap the knuckles of a budding sinner.
But I wanted to feel everything. Sometimes, I’m afraid of just how much.
There were times when I abstained, when the guilt and the shame wore me down. Now,
I can make myself come without touching. Look, Ma, no hands. It’s like a loophole.
It’s like tantra, fantasizing so vividly that I achieve cerebral climax, pleasure
radiating outwards from the mind, third eye unlocked. My cup runneth over.
2. Cancun
We wear the jungle air like wet silk, drink spiced honey tequila and mezcal,
agua fresca and chaya juice. Even a plunge into Ik Kil’s subterranean depths does nothing
to cool our ardor. In the open-air lobby, birds rustle in the rafters, clay-colored thrushes
and doves pecking at crystals from a spilled sugar packet. A slaughter of iguanas basks
in the rock garden. In the breezeways and cafes, the waiters bring us bowls of ceviche.
We pick out bits of shrimp to share with feral cats, gorged fat as tourists on resort food.
We hop a bus to Chichen Itza. In the Mayan village, they feed us the tenderest pibil pork,
roasted in pit ovens in the Yucatan soil. The 16th century cathedral is built from pillaged stones
of former indigenous strongholds. Kulkulkan itself obscured by vendors hawking souvenirs.
My mind rings with an afterimage of a black skull wall, the clap, the nine-times echoes.
3. The Condemned
He's lived more than half his life on death row.
Now he makes delicate origami cranes, threads them with filaments plucked
from his own meditation cushion. He sends them to me by the envelopeful.
They spill forth, scatter the table like stars, upcycled scrap paper, brightly-colored pages
torn from books on Buddhism. I take them out into the world and photograph them.
I leave one on a Dia de los Muertos altar, among the hundreds of other notes left for the dead.
Others I save to hang on a little white Easter tree.
They dangle like hanged men, southern trees still bearing strange fruit, a resurrection.
For he so loved the world, that he still wished for it to know peace.
One hundred down. Only nine hundred more to go.
4. Epitaph
I don't know where any of my people are buried. I am a poor santera.
Instead, I go with you to your family plots. Sometimes, we pack a picnic,
eating pears and cheese, chocolate and almonds, in the shade of a sycamore.
We pour one out for the ancestors. Sometimes, we sweep graves, pull weeds.
The mowers have been through, and they're careless about running over plastic floral
arrangements, toppling mementos. We pick up the debris, right what was desecrated.
The dead are like God. Maybe they’re here; maybe they're not. Maybe they can hear us;
maybe they can't. Maybe they turn a deaf ear. We do shrooms to try and see them.
They appear, but never like you expect. I don’t think they tell us anything
we don't already know: What you are, I have been. What I am now, you will be.
5. Soil
My grandfather was an artist. I used to play in his studio, where two mirrors
faced each other. I liked to see myself, caught in this silver crosshatch of infinity.
It's the same feeling that I get standing under a pure blue sky, looking up
into the branches of a birch, searching for nests. I eat and drink the earth.
I ask the same questions everyone has: “Can you hear me? Do you love me?”
All I hear is my own voice, echoing back, Hear me. Love me.
The hand and the speaker do not reveal themselves. My grandfather’s hands,
like the farmer’s and the pit cook’s, were soiled and chapped from his labors.
You learn to read the brushstrokes and furrows.
I take up clay and begin.
Acheiropoieta (a cadralor)
1. Catechism
I discovered masturbation when I was three. My mother caught me and slapped my hand,
told me I mustn’t ever do that again. When I was five, I spied on an older cousin
in the shower. When I was seven, my catechism teacher told me that touching myself
was dirty and displeasing to the Lord. Well, Lord, I remember thinking, this is where you and I
part ways. The nuns, also, were quick to rap the knuckles of a budding sinner.
But I wanted to feel everything. Sometimes, I’m afraid of just how much.
There were times when I abstained, when the guilt and the shame wore me down. Now,
I can make myself come without touching. Look, Ma, no hands. It’s like a loophole.
It’s like tantra, fantasizing so vividly that I achieve cerebral climax, pleasure
radiating outwards from the mind, third eye unlocked. My cup runneth over.
2. Cancun
We wear the jungle air like wet silk, drink spiced honey tequila and mezcal,
agua fresca and chaya juice. Even a plunge into Ik Kil’s subterranean depths does nothing
to cool our ardor. In the open-air lobby, birds rustle in the rafters, clay-colored thrushes
and doves pecking at crystals from a spilled sugar packet. A slaughter of iguanas basks
in the rock garden. In the breezeways and cafes, the waiters bring us bowls of ceviche.
We pick out bits of shrimp to share with feral cats, gorged fat as tourists on resort food.
We hop a bus to Chichen Itza. In the Mayan village, they feed us the tenderest pibil pork,
roasted in pit ovens in the Yucatan soil. The 16th century cathedral is built from pillaged stones
of former indigenous strongholds. Kulkulkan itself obscured by vendors hawking souvenirs.
My mind rings with an afterimage of a black skull wall, the clap, the nine-times echoes.
3. The Condemned
He's lived more than half his life on death row.
Now he makes delicate origami cranes, threads them with filaments plucked
from his own meditation cushion. He sends them to me by the envelopeful.
They spill forth, scatter the table like stars, upcycled scrap paper, brightly-colored pages
torn from books on Buddhism. I take them out into the world and photograph them.
I leave one on a Dia de los Muertos altar, among the hundreds of other notes left for the dead.
Others I save to hang on a little white Easter tree.
They dangle like hanged men, southern trees still bearing strange fruit, a resurrection.
For he so loved the world, that he still wished for it to know peace.
One hundred down. Only nine hundred more to go.
4. Epitaph
I don't know where any of my people are buried. I am a poor santera.
Instead, I go with you to your family plots. Sometimes, we pack a picnic,
eating pears and cheese, chocolate and almonds, in the shade of a sycamore.
We pour one out for the ancestors. Sometimes, we sweep graves, pull weeds.
The mowers have been through, and they're careless about running over plastic floral
arrangements, toppling mementos. We pick up the debris, right what was desecrated.
The dead are like God. Maybe they’re here; maybe they're not. Maybe they can hear us;
maybe they can't. Maybe they turn a deaf ear. We do shrooms to try and see them.
They appear, but never like you expect. I don’t think they tell us anything
we don't already know: What you are, I have been. What I am now, you will be.
5. Soil
My grandfather was an artist. I used to play in his studio, where two mirrors
faced each other. I liked to see myself, caught in this silver crosshatch of infinity.
It's the same feeling that I get standing under a pure blue sky, looking up
into the branches of a birch, searching for nests. I eat and drink the earth.
I ask the same questions everyone has: “Can you hear me? Do you love me?”
All I hear is my own voice, echoing back, Hear me. Love me.
The hand and the speaker do not reveal themselves. My grandfather’s hands,
like the farmer’s and the pit cook’s, were soiled and chapped from his labors.
You learn to read the brushstrokes and furrows.
I take up clay and begin.
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