for Montana Ray

 

PART 1

my hair is in curlers and i’m pretending i’m so ancient i’m already dead
& backstroking through Lake Guatavita like
ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY
FRIENDS
when i hear your sob stories about how poetry is awful, how poetry is useless
i want you to get the fuck out of my way / i want you to get the fuck out of poetry’s way
my inbox is full of half-finished messages apologizing for my hostility
when mi Mama Chava, a woman who survived 3 heart attacks, busts through me
in a moment of unapologetic glory because i’m just now learning how to not care
about the efforts of the white world & how it wants to tame me
chavar is the action of annoying or bugging someone, to get on one’s nerves
my fantasy is that my great-grandmother was so annoying, we called her Mama Chava
this is a lie, she died on the fourth heart attack, before i had a chance to ask her anything
that would help my survival

i wake up on Tuesday morning making mental lists of things to ask my grandmother
i wake up on Thursday morning making lists of things to ask my other grandmother, like
how does she grow to not be afraid of her own voice

this poem’s power is that it refuses order, to bug, to annoy
to not shut up, to not

ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY
FRIENDS
ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY
FRIENDS
ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY
FRIENDS
we are exhausted by academic multicultural elitism
we are exhausted by the way we must exist legibly
we are exhausted.
we are exhausted because our mothers have grown up under the feet of patriarchy &
our desire has been taken from us: we don’t know who to love
and this means we have to write all the poems teaching us first how to destroy
and then how it is to love

&

ANDR0ID JENNIFER TAMAY0 swims Lake Guatavita—gold-plated curlers
anchored to her shiny skull
a tomb, the lake opens forward like a wish: I am my most ecstatic g0ld self

limbs of g0ld
knuckles of g0ld
tits of g0ld
g0ld cunt
g0ld pubic hair
g0ld public lice
g0ld ovaries
g0ld uterus
one g0lden ventricle looping
the inside of our body shape
plugged right into the sun
lungs of gold, shimmery sacs
We are the g0ld throated ANDR0ID JENNIFER TAMAY0 I
am glorious. Made from glory
I am a gold revenge fantasy stuttered out:
La Dora/da

We wade out to the middle to meet Mama Chava, she wants to talk about healing
she wants to adorn my gilded torso with jewels scratched from the lake floor
the mystery of the wild onion flower on her lips
and i have to turn the other cheek:‎ㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤ

ㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤㅤH1! I C0ME HERE
WILLINGLY,

ㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤㅤㅤ‎the language rope tumbles out of my boca d’oro, a shrilly speech:

HI! MY UTERUS IS MADE OF G0LD & I’M N0T THE MULE
0F THE EARTH
HI! Hi! I AM N0000 L0NGER THE BRIDGE T0 ANYTHING
H1! ESTA LENGUA N0 TIENE PADRE

&

because I’m trying to be closer to nature
i’m on the internet searching for a history of the wild onion flower
when certain First Nations were ridiculed for batting
over what whites thought was just a flower—knowing nothing of its potency
every morning i wake up and look myself in the mirror and spit out
AMERICA IS A SETTLER COLONY FOUNDED ON GENOCIDE
and i try not to hate every teacher i had who didn’t put Anzaldúa in my hands
i had read all the collected works of Montaigne before I read Audre Lorde
& the image with which i can more clearly figure the suffering of the black and brown world
is unavailable to this poem, for example:
i live in a place where children throw rocks through windows at dusk and
my instinct is to say yes, children, yes
this poem’s power is that it refuses order, to bug, to annoy
to not shut up, to repeat itself

ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY FRIENDS
ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY FRIENDS

SOMETIMES THE LESSON FEELS LIKE: KEEP YOUR HEAD DOWN, THIS IS
HOW YOU DROWN
BUT ALL DAY L0NG I’M CONSIDERING THE REV0LUTION & S0 ARE MY
FRIENDS

because I’m trying to be closer to nature
i’m on the internet searching for a thing Eunsong Kim said about
artificial matriarchal spaces
these days i’m into negativity, like being less than, like being zero
like the possibility of zero to be so lacking it burns holes on all it touches

i imagine myself scorching
zero, deflated, effervescent—
a halo

i believe in the power of nothing
because first, fuck power
and second, could i coronate myself with a glowing nothing
i would do it forever, i am beautiful in the space of nothing in which I burn
the cavity of me outlined in pink droopy leaflets, scorched
from the inside out. don’t touch me ‎ㅤㅤ‎ㅤㅤi’m nothing.