the fact of matter

The fact is I matter.

I atom, according to chemists, 

and according to abuelita, a crooked

Vibrant sun, Lo Hice; I did it,.

I let a single black dove gobble

Out of my esophagus in song. Then another, then a trail 

of them, then a furious animated cloud of flocking birds away from winter and into summer.

Es la canción más difícil, 

I could sing it when I had a voice, but you,

Lo hiciste muy, pero muy bien. I’m surprised that my grief didn’t turn on me hungry, stab it’s beak into my wet 

organs confusing them for worms on songless nights, but it didn’t fester. Instead grief perched itself quietly along a leafless tree inside me,

Split itself into a million atoms and filled the tree voluptuously, a black dove tree, until it was ready. 

Abuelita congratulated the hurt in me when she recognized my fuller voice. It was more than being 

proud of how sound traveled in me, now,

How tone no longer tumbled out of me and how my pitch 

didn’t branch out all crooked like lightning. 

O, She was proud of the way I full surrendered to the weight of grief and let it fly out of me effortlessly,

Didn’t mask it in pop ranges and riffs, the pain was bold and held the suffering of lineages past in vibrato 

In the old Mexican ranchera ways. My voice turned Chavela Vargas, turned David zaizes, turned Lila downs, 

and aida Chavez, turned a million Palomas negras into a

Music from my body, my matter, my instrument that I’d 

learn the Antony of

The first time I let grief surprise me.

SINGING IS A FUNERAL

Singing is a funeral. I’ve avoided opening my throat in fear the dead would rise, walk out of me, leave me emptier after their fleeting. I think they don’t want me, the dead. They want to leave and find a soft rock to lay their head on. Instead I force them to sit perched, their black wings all slick and crow-like., while I drag the weight of Mexican unsung mourning. Now I have someone to blame. My brother isn’t coming back from the dead and I won’t fix my scale. The songs will remain unsung, the diaphragm, short so I can slowly suffocate each day and convene with the dead. A lineage of pain wont strike a guitar string, or piano key, or edge me to release the fully toned and well pitched black doves inside me. I will cage, and cage again, and for as long as I need this rage. I will fortify my walls, add more mud, fix each crack, to contain their memory in me, even if the song kills me. I must avoid the funeral at all costs.

kiss me before i ask

i learned young 

to never have a thing i could call mine

because he’d end up writing you 

letters in blue ball point pen

hand draw rose in the margins and you’d never see him again,

because he’d die in jail. or you’d lose it: your mcdonald

mulan doll that has soldier clothes under

a geisha dress i was robbed of early on.

everything repels a mind that wants,

time takes what you most desire, so i unfurled my fists

and let my first 6 boyfriends pass through me,

i let my hardest friend breakups be taken 

by any streams nearby, rivers or strong winds,

i was made of the color spirit blue and the souls of road

kill animalia. i had been made of ephemeral 

moments passing until i reached the last edge of me, somewhere between body

and death and the music she 

screeched with her

dragging scythe across the newly paved cross streets of a new

booming inglewood, that i realized the water in 

me, the vulnerable sloshing of my organs inside me, the frailty of a brain

unmoved for years until that day.

the first thing i claimed a part of me after death strolled by us, a cracked windshield, the poignant

smell of smoke, the inflamed  

innards of a machine, it’s exploded organs, the passenger seat, cursing

yells, a beep. i knew i 

loved him then, and wanted to hold on to him, so i double texted him.

i made sure to see him, when it all 

settled and my recovery led me to his city, area codes away from the car

accident. i still haven’t held his hand

but when i do i’ll know what it’ll mean for me to be mine,

to claim life and say i want you so bad, kiss me before i 

ask and live more alive.

On Reading Myself to Filth

Tonight the (tarot) cards revealed that when I am of earth, meaning, when I am fully immersed in my human experience (my grounded, direct path in the terrestrial represented by The Chariot card), the magic of the other-world disappears (upside down major arcana The Hierophant, holder of the keys of the cosmos). There is a severing that happens subconsciously between my spiritual path and my terrestrial one as if they’re distinct. I sustain that one cannot exist with the other, therefore sustain dualism, when in reality the only thing pushing my binary way of thinking is colonization or a deep desire to reach unity (which is stated in the Bhagavad Gita that we cannot reach unity without acknowledging the separation inherent in our cognition). This is where the reading begins: friction, severing, so moving on to The next placement of the spread, the cards elate because this kind of separation is equivalent to the chronic dissociation I’ve experienced my whole life as a formerly undocumented and trans person ( I’m clearly no foreigner to dissociation). In the Past-Present sector of the spread I chose today (the spread follows this order from left to right: The Past, Past-Present, The Present, Present-Future, and The Future) the cards side eye heavy, refuse to look at me in the eye cus they don’t have time for my pompous, cerebral ass bitxch self. The Hanged Person card is upside down. This cocky motherfucker AKA me, thinks they’re God; they move in the world all-knowing, therefore blocking any messages directly from the sun, in otherwords there’s nothing more to discover because “I know it all” in other words this motherfucker (me) has already finished writing the book that is my Life rather than LIVING it. Accompanying this clock is the 8 of Swords, which “stabs” a little too much, no pun intended (sword cards are literally representations of my shadow and mania work, so they come to me in reading A LOT seeking revenge, it feels like). The 8 of Swords highlights victimization, a soft blindfold covers my eyes, my hands are cuffed with silk, and I “can’t escape” the “jail” of 8 swords pierced around me. These previous months I’ve stopped producing written work or have done spiritual work because I need to “reevaluate” or “find my guiding questions” in other words EXCUSES to trap me in a state of stagnancy, because I know it all. Wrong. This transition was the hardest to go through—sometimes the most important thing I can do for myself is do what I love, offer myself the gift of my services to myself and let that guide me, rather than paralyzing myself. This isn’t to say the rest I’ve experienced wasn’t well-earned or rather NECESSARY, but it is to state the obvious which is: sometimes knowing too much prevents you from escaping your own mental cage. And so I freed myself…slowly, with great hesitation because I knew that leaving the comfort of my own detention would mean having to accept the aggrandizement of my life. The 1 of Cups reverse reflects my reservations in “starting over.” (To the point I made before regarding a period of revaluation of my work, it’s not that it wasn’t important I do that, it was the staying there as a crutch for inactivity and necessary production).  Supporting the 1 of Cups was the Queen of Pentacles, a motherfuckin QUEEN petting her bum ass rabbit outside her BIG ASS CASTLE cus the bitch is RICH and doesn’t have a worry in the world. All this, UPSIDE DOWN. Deep down, I know that what’s coming is grandeur, recognition of my work, it’s financial stability, and peace which are red flags to me in my telenovela cus I’ve never thought I could “deserve” any of it. I don’t want my heart to break, and so I don’t want to “begin” (1 of Cups). But the cards reminded me that The Present is always in flux, so I’m technically already experiencing what’s in the Present-Future. The High Priestess awaits me upright (thank the FUCKEN GAWDS) and the 7 of Swords (celebrated too soon). Although I’m in a more balanced place, my terrestrial and spiritual merging, my extremes softening into a/the Middle Path there is mental deception that I can partake in to convince myself that I’m “doing the work” but am actually not. The cards spoke intricately about The High Priestess. She writes, she teaches, she is a bridge between the stars and the desert, therefore that’s who I am and I too need to write and teach, therefore trust my accumulated wisdom and do what I know how to do best. HOWEVER, they exclaimed, don’t get distracted on stupid shit that has NOTHING to do with my path, hence the 7 of Swords upright (I’m telling you, the Swords trail my ass). So what’s to come? The Future has The Devil and 9 of Coins upside down (the money/ material stability’s tryna come in but I’m scared of my greatness). The Devil speaks on letting my desires emerge, but most importantly letting them GUIDE ME, just mindfully. Don’t get sidetracked, but do immerse, do play, do engage in pleasure. The 9 of Coins upside down is a checkpoint that once crossed will turn upright and let the money flow in. What’s the condition? Play smart! But work hard, I’m almost at the finish line! To conclude the reading three additional cards flew out tryna catch hands. All upside down, they came bearing messages, invitations so that their upright energy can be activated in my life. The 8 of Coins, the 10 of Cups, and the 3 of Cups lay me down gently. I’ve been frustrated with how much work I’ve put into all my crafts and services and haven’t seen me on the cover of a magazine with accolades that make me rich overnight. The 8 of Coin says, just keep working, do it because you love it, let it be THE gift (for you), your work is firstly for you, but to others as well. The 10 of Cups says it will bring me joy, completion, love, harmony in my “career” if I can sustain the steady work without thinking too much of the fruits of my labor or being too keen and critical about it. The 3 of Cups wants to encourage me that there will be so much to celebrate soon, if I don’t give up, keep doing the work of unifying my polarities and maintaining a sweet flow of steady action forward without excuses or derailments. The path is clear: I am the path. What I love to do is the path. I do not need answers before taking a step forward. I can discover those answers along the way, although it may be scary to walk across a river in the dark. But I have to remember that every step I take lights up the logs or rocks leading me across. The more confident a footing in real time the more light bursts the grounds beneath me. Light, I guess, then, becomes more meaningful this way; light a gift, an uncovering, a discovery rather than always an unappreciated given. It’s okay to bring more brightness and color into my world one step, one touch at a time. 

Tell Them

As I descend into the furnace

Susie will pull out old pictures of us,

claim to be the one to hurt more because

we were twins although we weren’t. Nana will be stuck,

hold her chest down, an injured bird

wanting the sky to finish killing it. Mami

will be fixing her pillow ensnared in the fire

next to mine, except she’ll be organizing

a quinceañera for me although I’m dead. Before

old lovers, ex best friends take to the mic

tell them I wrote to my son every day for a year

because I knew I wouldn’t meet him. Tell them

I loved them well, just not wisely. When my father

shows up, holding his cowboy hat as if it were

the bundle of me he held years ago tell them

I was really sensitive, tell them I was always scared

to fall, so I was always nervous, although I never showed

them. Tia Patty will cry because, Why isn’t she dead after

wanting death all her life, yet here I am, so lucky. Abuelita

will push words out of her body in a beautiful song,

cicadas, or chirping scoprions. Abuelito will say I never

gave up till 6 pm. Tell them I loved Pokémon more than

I led on. Tell them sex motivated my body for a long time:

It’s anorexia, its obesity, its cry and scoliosis, tell them

sex made me quiet, made me always yearning,

tell them I wanted to be irrelevant, invisible, although I fought

to be seen. Tell them I’m glad my spine can release it’s hold

and I can succumb. Tell them of the river in Sequioa, how it

was the best lover I ever had. Tell them I offered my eggs, my sperm,

to my best friend and told her to have the child she wanted.

tell them I let go of all that I thought I wanted, a big house,

With big windows, by the big ocean, my back yard filled with

big trees, tell them how my world changed. How I let go of

control, released everyone from hold, tell them I learned to love

The slice of life I have, how no longer was it my job

to play god, bring to life a life that wasn’t mine. I hear claps,

whistles, and joyful yells while I drown on my stage a full person,

a free person. Tell them I chose to live in my light than hide under a rock.

tell them that all the players, no matter how much they hurt me,

made me better. Tell them to stay. Tell them to forget the past,

tell them I’m not mad. Tell them my door never actually closed

and how they’re still welcome here, as I burn.