ADELINA ANTHONY

Here is one of the poems included in the Tragic Bitches collaboration:

THIRST

Not yet sprawling: San Antonio

You had dreams of moving there

of leaving that Pleasanton rancho

where your daughter days were stolen

by the man you called ápa

Too young, too female to be heard

once, you tried running away

rapid deer legs of a twelve-year old

with a mist of fog for camisole

hunted, captured, returned by your hermano

You, niña, would not shame them with your escape

insisting on something more for yourself

Back to the broken house where floorboards

creaked with those shuffling footsteps

of living death,

of nightmares,

of calloused hands…

dick

penetrating baby flesh

abandoned by all to wallow wounded

asustada in your burgeoning womanhood

Many, many years later, he, like others,

who came from Durango, Jalisco,

Oaxaca, Michoacoan,

from who knows where…

he saw you

behind the jealous shadow of your father

& he wondered what your mouth tasted of

Because hunger recognizes itself

you found ways to escape Father-Brother-Primo

vigilant ojos always watching

your promiscuous puta ways

but hunger devours & never asks

you made yourself naked to this Mexican

Man of promises & lovemaking by theft

Famished, you took him

your legs held his waist, hard

something like an abrazo between womyn friends

all night you cradled his immigrant dreams

in your third generation tejana sex

you confused his Mexican tongue

& trabajador sweat

for something

to call yours

What did he promise you?

I know he lied

that’s what they told me

part of the untold truth

que he married you for a green-card

for a way to feed his familia

his other wife & huercos

allá en México…

It’s what his compadres confirmed

when you went to that single apartment

on South Flores Street, & entered

a coffin of a room

where ten migrant workers slept

minus the one you searched for

I don’t know when

or if you ever told him

about me

Were you ashamed of me?

That I too was inside of you

my hands, my skin, my heart,

for nearly a year

only you

seed of my woman-to-woman desire

Eventually,

you chose me,

over him,

over betrayal,

over your family,

you chose not to drink a tea

that would have cramped your insides

would have held the idea of me

in an unforgiving fist for hours

& then would have released

me as crimson flower 

blood & tissue dripping

between your legs

I see now

this want of me

was somehow

your most lesbian act ever

I never had a choice

but to love you &

that warm woman bruised

cuerpo of yours

I tasted generations

of putrid historia

each time your breasts

nourished me with your

llanto-stained milk

y máma… your hurts still live in me

I, the lesbian daughter,

who drank of you

do not forget



UPCOMING: Tlatloca, and Other Diosas Who Brought Me to My Knees. (To be edited/ published by Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano's Kórima Press)



TRAGIC BITCHES

Conceived and developed by Adelina Anthony, Dino Foxx and Lorenzo Herrera y Lozano, Tragic Bitches documents the process and poetry of three queer Xicana/o artists seeking to revel and heal in the darkest and most vulnerable spaces of love, desire and loss.

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"No olvides nunca, que la causa de tu presencia es tu pasado, como la causa de tu futuro es tu presente.." --Pablo Neruda