Note to the Reader
Copper Canyon Press encourages you to calibrate your settings by using the line of characters below, which optimizes the line length and character size:
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Pellentesque euismod
Please take the time to adjust the size of the text on your viewer so that the line of characters above appears on one line, if possible.
When this text appears on one line on your device, the resulting settings will most accurately reproduce the layout of the text on the page and the line length intended by the author. Viewing the title at a higher than optimal text size or on a device too small to accommodate the lines in the text will cause the reading experience to be altered considerably; single lines of some poems will be displayed as multiple lines of text. If this occurs, the turn of the line will be marked with a shallow indent.
Thank you. We hope you enjoy these poems.
This e-book edition was created through a special grant provided by the Paul G. Allen Family Foundation. Copper Canyon Press would like to thank Constellation Digital Services for their partnership in making this e-book possible.
With immeasurable gratitude to Cecilia,
Diane, Eloise, Janet, and Ted
No hay mal que dure cien años,
ni cuerpo que lo resista.
—Spanish proverb
Contents
Title Page
Note to Reader
When My Brother Was an Aztec
I
Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
Hand-Me-Down Halloween
Why I Hate Raisins
The Red Blues
The Gospel of Guy No-Horse
A Woman with No Legs
Tortilla Smoke: A Genesis
Reservation Mary
Cloud Watching
Mercy Songs to Melancholy
If Eve Side-Stealer & Mary Busted-Chest Ruled the World
The Last Mojave Indian Barbie
Reservation Grass
Other Small Thundering
Jimmy Eagle ’s Hot Cowboy Boots Blues
The Facts of Art
Prayers or Oubliettes
The Clouds Are Buffalo Limping toward Jesus
II
My Brother at 3 a.m.
Zoology
How to Go to Dinner with a Brother on Drugs
Downhill Triolets
As a Consequence of My Brother Stealing All the Lightbulbs
Formication
Mariposa Nocturna
Black Magic Brother
A Brother Named Gethsemane
Soirée Fantastique
No More Cake Here
III
I Watch Her Eat the Apple
Toward the Amaranth Gates of War or Love
Self-Portrait as a Chimera
Dome Riddle
I Lean Out the Window and She Nods Off in Bed, the Needle Gently Rocking on the Bedside Table
Monday Aubade
When the Beloved Asks, “What Would You Do if You Woke Up and I Was a Shark?”
Lorca’s Red Dresses
Of Course She Looked Back
Apotheosis of Kiss
Orange Alert
The Elephants
Why I Don’t Mention Flowers When Conversations with My Brother Reach Uncomfortable Silences
The Beauty of a Busted Fruit
Love Potion 2012
A Wild Life Zoo
About the Author
Books by Natalie Diaz
Acknowledgments
Copyright
Special Thanks
When My Brother Was an Aztec
he lived in our basement and sacrificed my parents
every morning. It was awful. Unforgivable. But they kept coming
back for more. They loved him, was all they could say.
It started with him stumbling along la Avenida de los Muertos,
my parents walking behind like effigies in a procession
he might burn to the ground at any moment. They didn’t know
what else to do except be there to pick him up when he died.
They forgot who was dying, who was already dead. My brother
quit wearing shirts when a carnival of dirty-breasted women
made him their leader, following him up and down the stairs—
They were acrobats, moving, twitching like snakes— They fed him
crushed diamonds and fire. He gobbled the gifts. My parents
begged him to pluck their eyes out. He thought he was
Huitzilopochtli, a god, half-man half-hummingbird. My parents
at his feet, wrecked honeysuckles, he lowered his swordlike mouth,
gorged on them, draining color until their eyebrows whitened.
My brother shattered and quartered them before his basement festivals—
waved their shaking hearts in his fists,
while flea-ridden dogs ran up and down the steps, licking their asses,
turning tricks. Neighbors were amazed my parents’ hearts kept
growing back—It said a lot about my parents, or parents’ hearts.
My brother flung them into cenotes, dropped them from cliffs,
punched holes into their skulls like useless jars or vases,
broke them to pieces and fed them to gods ruling
the ratty crotches of street fair whores with pocked faces
spreading their thighs in flophouses with no electricity. He slept
in filthy clothes smelling of rotten peaches and matches, fell in love
with sparkling spoonfuls the carnival dog-women fed him. My parents
lost their appetites for food, for sons. Like all bad kings, my brother
wore a crown, a green baseball cap turned backwards
with a Mexican flag embroidered on it. When he wore it
in the front yard, which he treated like his personal zócalo,
all his realm knew he had the power that day, had all the jewels
a king could eat or smoke or shoot. The slave girls came
to the fence and ate out of his hands. He fed them maíz
through the chain links. My parents watched from the window,
crying over their house turned zoo, their son who was
now a rusted cage. The Aztec held court in a salt cedar grove
across the street where peacocks lived. My parents crossed fingers
so he’d never come back, lit novena candles
so he would. He always came home with turquoise and jade
feathers and stinking of peacock shit. My parents gathered
what he’d left of their bodies, trying to stand without legs,
trying to defend his blows with missing arms, searching for their fingers
to pray, to climb out of whatever dark belly my brother, the Aztec,
their son, had fed them to.
I
Abecedarian Requiring Further Examination of Anglikan Seraphym Subjugation of a Wild Indian Rezervation
Angels don’t come to the reservation.
Bats, maybe, or owls, boxy mottled things.
Coyotes, too. They all mean the same thing—
death. And death
eats angels, I guess, because I haven’t seen an angel
fly through this valley ever.
Gabriel? Never heard of him. Know a guy named Gabe though—
he came through here one powwow and stayed, typical
Indian. Sure he had wings,
jailbird that he was. He flies around in stolen cars. Wherever he stops,
kids grow like gourds from women’s bellies.
Like I said, no Indian I’ve ever heard of has ever been or seen an angel.
Maybe in a Christmas pageant or something—
Nazarene church holds one every December,
organized by Pastor John’s wife. It’s no wonder
Pastor John’s son is the angel—everyone knows angels are white.
Quit bothering with angels, I say. They’re no good for Indians.
Remember what happened last time
some white god came floating across the ocean?
Truth is, there may be angels, but if there are angels
up there, living on clouds or sitting on thrones across the sea wearing
velvet robes and golden rings, drinking whiskey from silver cups,
we’re better off if they stay rich and fat and ugly and
’xactly where they are—in their own distant heavens.
You better hope you never see angels on the rez. If you do, they’ll be marching you off to
Zion or Oklahoma, or some other hell they’ve mapped out for us.
Hand-Me-Down Halloween
The year we moved off / the reservation /
a / white / boy up the street gave me a green trash bag
fat with corduroys, bright collared shirts
& a two-piece / Tonto / costume
turquoise thunderbird on the chest
shirt & pants
the color of my grandmother’s skin / reddish brown /
my mother’s skin / brown-redskin /
My mother’s boyfriend laughed
said now I was a / fake / Indian
look-it her now yer / In-din / girl is a / fake / In-din
My first Halloween off / the reservation /
that I was wearing his old costume
/ A hand-me-down? /
I looked at my hands
All them / whites / laughed at me
/ called me half-breed /
threw Tootsie Rolls at / the half-breed / me
Later / darker / in the night
at / white / Jeremiah’s front door / tricker treat /
I made a / good / little Injun his father said
now don’t you make a / good / little Injun
He gave me a Tootsie Roll
More night came / darker / darker /
Mothers gathered their / white / kids from the dark
My / dark / mother gathered / empty / cans
while I waited to gather my / white / kid
I waited to gather / white / Jeremiah
He was / the skeleton / walking past my house
a glowing skull and ribs
I ran & tackled his / white / bones / in the street
His candy spilled out / like a million pinto beans /
Asphalt tore my / brown-red-skin / knees
I hit him harder and harder / whiter / and harder
He cried for his momma
I put my fist-me-downs / again and again and down /
He cried / for that white / She came running
She swung me off him
dug nails into my wrist
pulled me to my front door
yelled at her / white / kid to go wait at home
go wait at home Jeremiah, Momma will take care of this
She was ready / to take care of this /
to pound on my door / but no tricker treat /
My door was already open
and before that white could speak or knock
/ or put her hands down on my door /
my mother told her to take her hands off of me
taker / fuck-king / hands off my girl
My mother stepped / or fell / toward that white /
I don’t remember what happened next
I don’t remember that / white / momma leaving
/ but I know she did /
My mother’s boyfriend said
well / Kemosabe / you ruined your costume
wull / Ke-mo-sa-be / you fuckt up yer costume
My first Halloween
off / the reservation /
my mother said / maybe / next year
you can be a little Tinker Bell / or something /
now go git that / white / boy’s can-dee
—iss-in the road
Why I Hate Raisins
And is it only the mouth and belly which are injured by hunger and thirst?
Mencius
Love is a pound of sticky raisins
packed tight in black and white
government boxes the day we had no
groceries. I told my mom I was hungry.
She gave me the whole bright box.
USDA stamped like a fist on the side.
I ate them all in ten minutes. Ate
too many too fast. It wasn’t long
before those old grapes set like black
clay at the bottom of my belly
making it ache and swell.
I complained, I hate raisins.
I just wanted a sandwich like other kids.
Well that’s all we’ve got, my mom sighed.
And what other kids?
Everyone but me, I told her.
She said, You mean the white kids.
You want to be a white kid?
Well too bad ’cause you’re my kid.
I cried, At least the white kids get a sandwich.
At least the white kids don’t get the shits.
That’s when she slapped me. Left me
holding my mouth and stomach—
devoured by shame.
I still hate raisins,
we stood in to get them—winding
around and in the tribal gymnasium.
Not for the awkward cardboard boxes
we carried them home in. Not for the shits
or how they distended my belly.
I hate raisins because now I know
my mom was hungry that day, too,
and I ate all the raisins.
The Red Blues
There is a dawn between my legs,
a rising of mad rouge birds, overflowing
and crazy-mean, bronze-tailed hawks,
a phoenix preening
sharp-hot wings, pretty pecking procession,
feathers flashing like flames
in a Semana Santa parade.
There are bulls between my legs,
a torera
stabbing her banderillas,
snapping her cape, tippy-toes scraping
my mottled thighs, the crowd’s throats open,
shining like new scars, cornadas glowing
from beneath hands and white handkerchiefs
bright as bandages.
There are car wrecks between my legs,
a mess of maroon Volkswagens,
a rusted bus abandoned in the Grand Canyon,
a gas tanker in flames,
an IHS van full of corned beef hash,
an open can of commodity beets
on this village’s one main road, a stoplight
pulsing like a bullet hole, a police car
flickering like a new scab,
an ambulance driven by Custer,
another ambulance
for Custer.
There is a war between my legs,
’ahway nyavay, a wager, a fight, a losing
that cramps my fists, a battle on eroding banks
of muddy creeks, the stench of metal,
purple-gray clotting the air,
in the grass the bodies
dim, cracked pomegranates, stone fruit,
this orchard stains
like a cemetery.
There is a martyr between my legs,
my personal San Sebastián
leaking reed arrows and sin, stubbornly sewing
a sacred red ribbon dress, ahvay chuchqer,
the carmine threads
pull the Colorado River,
’Aha Haviily, clay,
and creosotes from the skirt,
each wound a week,
a coral moon, a calendar, a begging
for a master, or a slave, for a god
in magic cochineal pants.
There are broken baskets between my legs,
cracked vases, terra-cotta crumbs,
crippled grandmothers with mahogany skins
whose ruby shoes throb on shelves in closets,
who teach me to vomit
this fuchsia madness,
this scarlet smallpox blanket,
this sugar-riddled amputated robe,
these cursive curses scrawling down my calves,
this rotting strawberry field, swollen sunset,
hemoglobin joke with no punch line,
this crimson garbage truck,
this bloody nose, splintered cherry tree, manzano,
this métis Mary’s heart,
guitarra acerezada, red race mestiza, this cattle train,
this hand-me-down adobe drum,
this slug in the mouth,
this ’av’unye ’ahwaatm, via roja dolorosa,
this dark hut, this mud house, this dirty bed,