La Reina de Tejas (Live from the Astrodome)
Amá said you died the week before I was born,que eras tan feroz with your jumper,before se puso de moda, and the little girls who wore ’embutterflew into muchachas. Tenía que vertein pot-bellied teles, canal cracklinglike comal-burnt tortillas. Te víin pants flared like your nariz, chatalike my sister’s. I munched on tacos, juicedripping as Amá squealed, Agarra la colita. Te víyour hands castanets, my size 3 Godzilla shoestapped to their bidi bidi. Tus eyebrows archedto a dome with tierra-dusked faces. Te vícomo la flor la maestra Barragán showed us,a night-blooming cactus I called selenagrandiflorus. From Tejana lips, víthe Spanish I couldn’t mouth. Stuttered songstill words flowed like the taco’s orange grasa.I lick my fingers, lean on the couch cover. Víyou peer from orange-stained glass, cooingmy tongue to #nally sing, Me diste túúúú.My heart trembled, I can speak like us. Ví,full lips like mine hush the roaring crowdthat tightens my tummy just like Amá’sraspberry kisses. You leave the stage,your sparkles sugar the sofá’s puddle of drool.
Feature Date
- April 13, 2022
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“La Reina de Tajas (Live from the Astrodome)” from Gentefication
Copyright © 2021 by Antonio de Jesus Lopez.
Appears with permission of Four Way Books.
All rights reserved.
fourwaybooks.com/site/gentefication/
Antonio López is a poetician working at the intersection of poetry, politics and social change. He has received literary scholarships to attend the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, Tin House, the Vermont Studio Center, and Bread Loaf. He is a proud member of the Macondo Writers Workshop and a CantoMundo Fellow. He holds degrees from Duke University, Rutgers-Newark, and the University of Oxford. He is pursuing a PhD in Modern Thought and Literature at Stanford University. His debut poetry collection, Gentefication, was selected by Gregory Pardlo as the winner of the 2019 Levis Prize in Poetry. Antonio is currently fighting gentrification in his hometown as the newest and youngest councilmember for the City of East Palo Alto. www.barrioscribe.com
“In his debut poetry collection, Gentefication, Antonio de Jesús López adorns novelty with innovation by rendering the reader—in addition to the objective world—in surprising new ways. As if they were exorcising our demons or, less ominously, assigning us roles that break from the typecast routines of our daily lives, these poems call to the surface aspects of ourselves that we are rarely asked to engage. Poems tender and ironic, earnest and outraged display a mind abundant with knowledge yet desperate for answers. While so much American poetry asks of the reader only their passive attention, these poems work like personal trainers. They call for the kind of mental and spiritual absorption that can make prayer feel productive.”
—Gregory Pardlo, Winner of the Pulitzer Prize in Poetry
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