CALL & RESPONSE
In the name of the kick and glow of my name pronounced right,
in the name of the unstroked ego.
My grandma yanked me into the kitchen of a restaurant to give me a blessing,
even my atheist cousins fork over their foreheads for her thumb to cross it before a road trip.
I can see the outer layer of a future sometimes, sprinkled in close-deaths which smell like rust,
I must be the condition.
In the name of what unravels when we are pulled,
one end of me is tied down a windowsill, I am brushing against the ivy.
Once you watch a friend finish breathing, dawn looks like a cracked egg you long to return to its shell.
In the name of the nuisance we goal & gore,
in the name of dumb travel wrought for depth.
In the name of a simple bowl, uncorrupted,
in the name of a scissor toward our last strands.
In the name of our frank and boundless, existing in every petal,
every day is a precious pull back into the sun’s good luck.
HISTORY OF THE COUSIN
A cousin is a cousin is a cousin. I make plans with my cousin to smoke and talk of nothing other than
our cousins and our parents’ cousins. We look out at the Flatiron mountains, whose cousins
live in Germany, whose cousin is, arguably, a volcano that frightened a town yesterday. Killing
is cousin to the law, which is a cousin to women, in-lawed to pinnacle. My cousin’s cousin
is an investor, which is related to blood drawn and flowing from me each month. Month is cousin to
distance, cousin to spread, lineage of a disease already folded out of memory. Memory is cousin
to trauma, cousin to response, whose cousin is freedom,
whose twice removed is land, cousin to God, cousin to the muses, and their names are:
Prima Anna, Prima Amanda,
Prima Camila, Mikayla, and Alex
Prima Selena, Prima Lorena, Prima Joan, Prima Cher.
Prima Pendleton, Prima Prometheus, Prima Sagittarius,
Prima Cutting our Lawn, Prima Clearing Our Table,
Prima Sunday Scaries, Prima RedCherries, Prima Pop Culture,
Prima Guilt, Insomnia, Prima Withdrawal, Prima Lexapro,
Prima Judge, Prima Protest, Prima Bill That Breaks My Heart.
Prima understands the fear of white women,
the fear of standing in front of a large crowd without any prima in sight.
Prima is provider, Prima fixes my baby hairs,
Prima got me this top, Prima got me this job,
Prima got me a ride to dinner and then made me late to dinner,
Prima makes me late to the end of the world.
Prima sees mother in self, Prima says fuck, Prima apologizes even if via waterfall.
Prima picks me off of the red rocks and dusts me off, Prima puts me back into the river.
Prima breaks my family tree prima buries a turquoise seed,
Prima makes a forest where we thought we’d never bloom, Prima plants a poem for me.
MORE!
I want more poems! More lines drawn
between the stars! I want poems about your bills
and that stolen bike you still mourn like a child!
More poems about the laundry mat’s sacred stink
and the seance going on between you and me and this page!
I summon the ghost of Selena upon us! Ask her who
her classics were and she’d tell you cumbia and slang
and summers! I want more poems about friends! My galaxy!
Like the time me and D drove to the Blue Ridges just to taste them
on a Thursday—and though all we saw was fog on a cliff
and couldn’t make one fire, tents are now my favorite place
and D is still my favorite Thursday! More poems
about how it was raining so hard at my wedding
that we drove to Sonic and blessed my dress with grease!
More poems that make me uncomfortable
with the slant of the world! Follow it to the fold!
Critique that crease! Give me poems that ask things of me!
Poems about coding and pap smears and sports!
About cacti and cowboys and Bad Bunny!
And before you remind me
about my suffering, before academia can stop me,
before Carl Sandburg can slap me—please.
I want one about how the sun was so strong,
when my largest organ saw its light, I became a poem.
ERASURE POEM
“In Mexico, president López Obrador built a wall against feminist protesters. Activists filled the wall with the names of femicide victims.”
@marianaliru
***
Author photograph courtesy of Marisa Tirado
