Sarah Maria Medina

Dear Ochún,

My brother texts: some        cut up wisdom       & I feel how broken he sees me:      a five year old girl         a split diamond     between my wide thighs.         Since I  broke quiet,  since         I spilled, I watch bootleg      instead of  poem. Ochún,        how can I  write in English?             I begin, it cheapens                my tongue. I dream of Standing        Rock. All the silent guazábaras.      I ready myself,  but I have to pay           rent. I slip        so easily from bed to river,        I let my hand           over the side           the floor floods black. River   there between fingers.     I hear your waves as dock rocks against hull. How kerosene     glows yellow,      smell of wick. How burnt smoke        sticks to back throat.       It was like this: all the bad magic       that wept through           that  floating shack paled to your strength. You rocked        me & constellated hard. Your sweet       water ran through                 my blood & I spoke below. Now, they say    the oil snake   begs a sweet    whine through your waters.      Let me say this:     my daughter is named        water. Ochún, you gave me river     as daughter    & soy siempre la huracan. Instead of bohío,     double gold fee. Instead     of forest,   food bank. I miss      the sound of an aluminum roof. The way    water pours over & lets me know    I’m home. They say our language   guata    is dead. They say our people      guata       are dead. They taught          me that I’m a ghost spirit walking.              They left me on the river.

  Siempre tuya,                                  María

      After MINE 

Women up on  yur Instagram &  us in a  dream. Don’t you wanna  roll with a good girl? Porter Ray fingers his  baby  mustache,  says he’s  going to  pyramid in  México, says he’s going  to smoke pulque.  He  looks South  & the  wall opens.  Buried  MINES detonate. A  queen stands  at yur door, her  pout neon. What  survival  looks like shifts  &  is  more  than  the closing  of  wound.  These are just  the little things.  Marriage a  colonial  grind,  good girls  called putas  & jailed  in San  Juan.  Mira, it comes  down to this:  I  don’t want  to be  wife if love means own,  if love  means my  queen grills me on la  boxeadora, if  she burns my stack of  cream back  from the  club,  pulls my  braids  around her wrist, & cuts  into my  own skin.  I had  the tattoo  before  love,  lived in  the park at  the end  of the Avenue.  All  that  damp  rolled  back  into my  smoke & I  breathed it back out,  survival a  mouthful  of Milky  Way.  Porque soy  bruja,  porque  soy loca  pa  ti, porque  soy tuya.  Survival  is Jack licking a swisher & talking backward & then forward at three times the speed cuz his spit is honey.  He speaks  that fast  & raps  faster.  Jack on  the edge of  my bed after I take the morning-after-pill from his cousin & suicide  wets my mouth.  Jack won’t leave until the poison  leaves my body. When I go over yur studio, I don’t stop cuz survival is asking for more than five  minutes, choosing  conversation  over fuck with,  as in  I don’t  fuck with  your  syndicate.  The queen  outside is cold,  she looks like me,  but doll.  Porque soy  bruja, porque no  uso mestiza,  porque soy loca pa ti, porque  no soy tuya.  I kiss the  queen’s knuckle, tell her she’s bruja. She becomes pyramid & smoke. I forget to tell you, we make a coven of three.