RAQUEL GUTIÉRREZ
SAN ANGELO CITY LIMITS
I drove the misery
only a panhandle is capable of,
a West Texan mystery towards a selfie
in front of the San Angelo City Limits sign
a sky at my feet a flatness
matched by the way I use “moon” as a facial description,
and a dirt road for 60 miles
to find my way back to my beloved
La hija de Genaro emerged from the Concho Valley,
in a super 8 film wearing white, a hellion
the queen of her cousins,
empty Coke bottles her crown.
Grandpa Chico sneaks them to her under the table
—everyone can see. His affection a rough rasp that billows
in the nape of her vellicate,
her baby Texan drawl rains
like a fictionalized account
worth dying for.
Little girl shrieks toothsome,
makes a mockery of Chico’s sediment tongue,
an accent that prefaces bells and sales of petrol,
the best in San Angelo
where all of their kin trace their line before others
crossed them brusquely.
I’m looking for Chico’s gas station, the only ghost in this town
full of chain restaurants that all look the same
My beloved’s hair falls down long and straight
like the narrative of quantum
the state dictates
and the scar along the trail amid her soft lips
beneath a mutinous chin,
an errant wandering.
The little girl in the film makes no sound.
And I wake up at 5am to meet the sunrise
just to say I did
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*** ** ***
CALL OFF THE DOGS
in the garden and refrain from weeding the flowers you call weeds,
break the tar down in my lungs
sweet mugwort mugwort bitter
salve in the mugshot
of my alkaline.
The Spanish arrive like clockwork
turn the page history book where it all looks the same
it’s late 17th century, the Tohono O’odham permanent villages these waterways
were systems a flourishing. We let go of Tucson last,
Mexican troops on the ground
two thousand farmers 1856 (almost ten
years after Guadalupe Hidalgo),
I know you say annoyed as fuck
you know everything that spills off the parchment about what used to be Mexico.
Gadsen Purchase
for the New York relatives,
El Tratado de la Mesilla
for the Royal Aztecs, vatas locas purple nylon sheen,
Despegate de tu vaga settler wanderings come home already
only you can save me
when you touch me with the tips of your fists.
Hold on, Sonora, hold on to yourself for one more winter
where we call these ocotillos, these the tunas.
We call these the desastres.
Yo soy Sonora, in a time machine adobe
that takes me back to an 1848 that can wait until
we’ve mastered our astrology of fate.
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*** ** ***
SONOITA MASSACRE
I had no love but love
and no occupation but labor
primero de mayo 1859 seven Mexican workers Reventon Ranch whipped by their overseer.
I’m not turned on by normal power Catholic church and seven sacraments later
this is why I call you pasty, lover. Safe word repeat cinco de Mayo comes true.
Mercer shaved off their hair in a particularly brutal manner. The Anglos blazing infinite.
Dickies and Cortez.
What I drink doesn’t
heal the cut on my belly
As these settler bros approached a mescal distillery how to preserve dignity down on my
knees my country piss on me
government, taxes, public debt. It was perfect, just
nature Mexican and Yaqui workers tried to escape a broken sullen fire
too busy to be dreaming here
what I snort cuts the cord between cortex a warning warm moaning assemblage
mob of seven armed men, four Mexicans, one Yaqui lay dead
Sonora Mining and Exploring Company
a promise heart on Mexican labor peonage to the mall and these bags are heavy
forget the bleed,
just us miscarriage in the building of state out of frontier
that followed Arizona’s captain extractive industries captive with
the years to come
the years to yonder
but I’m lazy for money, imagination don’t do orphanage games, bad meals at high prices
I’m a lumpenproleteriat here to set a precedent to hunger, a rage in your belly
and I’m yawning the best years away waiting
to find ourselves as lovers in a land
lording over us again
scraping flesh from our rind
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*** ** ***
MY TEETH BREAK THE ICE
and the wind scratching out of its skin
pillages
the remaining moisture from my hands
we are in the middle of it cracking
The ice melts The stone erodes
the obedience; it got us
clawing until
we bleed
Tonguing fire, molten Nicorette
birthing flowers in my pores
for memory to condition body
back from the part of the dead we sprung from
here we come on winged eyelids
and butterfly knives
Barbara Lynn East Texas southpaw Fender maple
playing angel has beckoned us, a pack between
three-quarters Mexican hot pink fight
just try it, Daddy
You want
to bring out
the cholo
in me
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*** ** ***
EMOTIONAL LABOR
I want to wear you down like mammalian powder,
and masticate you maternal like time fight the tempt
against your omniscient maw
a monster with no brood, no control, a mestiza maker of messes.
We get blood on the sheets again.
Before your sex sunders into monotonous stone,
the quarry yawns inside your mouth crusting with phosphate,
the earth dried home for stray and starry scoria; the pine cones pleaded
and their saplings never saw geminids or perseids or the fiery tails that promise
your restless tresses laid bare on the concrete parts of a national park.
You could barely move, forget the viscuosity
of younger forests between thumb and forefinger,
you took the pulp for granted
and when I gave you a taste you bucked medallion wild on bare breasts
you took and took, watched your hand backlit by sun as if for the first time ever there was time
Spasm sought nipple
for I, mere boscage and eager chaparral avoidant fire warning
I never learned to keep my wailing at bay.
You didn’t give me back. You took an axe and thought about it
and said I had jouissance but I didn’t have a job.
I was kindling in your arms.
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RAQUEL GUTIÉRREZ
Raquel Gutiérrez is a writer of personal essays, memoir, art criticism, and poetry. An adult child of Mexican and Salvadoran immigrants, she was born and raised in Los Angeles and currently lives in Tucson, Arizona where she is a semester away from completing an MFA in Poetry and Non-Fiction from the University of Arizona. Raquel is a 2017 recipient of the Creative Capital | Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She also runs the tiny press, Econo Textual Objects (est. 2014), which publishes intimate works by QTPOC poets. Her poetry and essays have appeared in the Los Angeles Review of Books, Open Space, The New Inquiry, Zocaló Public Square, and other venues. For more info, click here: raquelgutierrez.net/.
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A Dozen Nothing 