Maria Melendez Kelson

Granite Weaving, 1988, by Jesús Moroles “He” grates across the throat, the “h” a dry abrasion on the tongue — Across the throat, the “h” in “she” is tucked behind the folded muscle. In “she” is tucked the “e” the lips unpurse to say, same as saying “we.” My lips unpurse to say the names of  God, of    Love, and they are “She.” The names of   God, of   Love are, too, old explosions coded into granite. Too, old explosions cooled to stone warm to the touch of  light, as she, Stone-warmed and glowing, let my lips brush velvet shadows onto hers. Let my lips brush the story soft, forget that “he” was scrape and struggle. The story soft forgets that “he” was heavy, wrestled into “we,” and weaving “He” heavy, wrestled (strands of  granite yarned like fabric) into “we,” Strands of granite halt their dry abrasion, interlock, and become “She.”

The Indiscriminate Citizenry of Earth are out to arrest my sense of being a misfit. “Open up!” they bellow, hands quiet before my door that’s only wind and juniper needles, anyway. You can’t do it, I squeak from inside. You can’t make me feel at home here in this time of siege for me and mine,mi raza. Legalized suspicion of my legitimacy is now a permanent resident in my gut. “Fruit of the prickly pear!” they swear, striding up to my table to juice me a glass of pink nectar. They’ve brought welcome baskets stuffed with proof I’m earthling. From under a gingham cover, I tug a dark feather iridescing green — cohering to “magpie” thought, to memory’s chatter, to mind. Mine. And here they have my mind translated into a slate-surfaced pond, which vibrates in the shape of a cottonwood’s autumn molt, which trees me to dirt, which soils me heat & freeze — But you’ll always be one definitive document short! I complain. Doubts can forever outstrip your geo-logic. For which they produce a lock of my natal dust, bronzed to the fluttering fiber of lacebark pine. Where’d they get that stuff? The baskets are bottomless, and it’s useless for me to insist on being distinct. Undergoing re-portation, I’m awakened to a Center, where walls between all beings are dreamt to dissolve.

Jesus, I want my sins back. My prattle, pride, and private prices — climbing, clinching, clocking — I might loan you a few for the evening, so you don’t show up at your own crucifixion naked of all purpose. But for God’s sake, don’t spill any redemption on them! They’re my signature looks. Body by Envy. Make up & wardrobe provided by Avarice. Lord, if you take away my inordinate cravings, what the hell’s left? Do you know how much I paid for my best rages? I want them all back if they’re so To Die For. Else shred my palms, wash my face with spit, let the whip unlace my flesh and free the naked blood, let me be tumbled to immortality with the stew of flood debris that is my life.

À La Mode, 1976, by Asco (photographer: Harry Gamboa, Jr.) I dare you to hear me tell just which and what sort of girl I was, always had been, and why. You may as well yes-yes me. You’ll get no chance to cut in. This is No Movie and I’m the leading gal, the femme fatale in cork platform sandals, mis- taking Woolworth’s plastic earrings for glam, mis-american, which and what sort? The kind who never introduces the top six buttons of  her dress to their holes, whose legs always cross when she sits on a table, who pats vanilla pancake over her rich, theatrical skin to lift dark hair, dark eyes, dark lips from the level of   East Los Common to revelation, and you’re all in my made-up fairy tale now, you & these suave muchachos, we’re all queasy in the where is it 40s  50s  60s 70s brown beautiful people pronouncing our perfect English, accorded zero-to-slivers of silver screen glory. I dare you, looking in from the tangled reel of the future, say out loud what I’m sitting on. Kitten-posed on a table top in Philippe’s Original Sandwich Shop, Los Angeles, ’76, next to the napkins and sugar shaker, I’m not afraid of the cleaning rag wiping me out of the frame, I take in the unedited numbers that tumble in one continuous shot from my Now to yours, and there’s a mestiza born every minute, I know where I sit: right on top of a pretty warm piece of sweet American pie.