Nepantla: An Anthology Dedicated to Queer Poets of Color

by Christopher Soto

I wonder what I’d do with eight arms, two eyes & too many ways to give myself away

Your father is only your father until one of you forgets.

The most beautiful part of your body is wherever your mother’s shadow falls.

My mother knew her mother died before the telephone rang like bells announcing the last American helicopter leaving Sài Gòn.

My mouth a pomegranate split open, a grenade with its loose pin.

thinness and penetration don’t have to be about power but why does this make me feel so dis(sed)empowered and who is fucking him when he’s not fucking me

how thin do you have to be to be loved

It’s never too late for someone else to have your happy childhood.

I call out God’s good name in the midst of the first miracle—the black body. Look at him, at us. Were the mountains not named after some dark brotha’s shoulders? Didn’t the wind learn its ways from watching two boys run the spine of a field?

Can you wash me without my body Coming apart in your hands?

glory be a woman who reminds me of the spirits in my stomach lining

because what is the diasporic kitchen if not one bellowing sob

I’m ashamed of how much water my body holds. I’m more ocean than girl

Listen: Ma told me that some people are softer than others And some people are knives.

WHAT ARE YOU IF NOT THE TRAUMA YOU INHERIT?

auntie used to say the settlers took the hilltops & aquifers first. uprooted the olive trees & waged BIOLOGICAL WARFARE against our lineage: reclamation.

don’t mention citizenship talk about love, how you got married for love

There is your hand on the door which is now the door pretending to be a thing that opens.

how lucky: the belt that gets to hug your waist, the crucifix that hangs from a chain on your chest!

I’m from the South, a suburb where Grief pulls the shades first, stays home if indecent.

your sorrow struts four rows down from me, strands you an astronaut on some distant, undiscovered moon.

these are the final drops of my fear—drink them these are the final drops of my fever—drink them these are the final drops of my love—drink them

There is a place somewhere where he will call me hijo and I will know him as my dad.

I gaze at you, longing, longing, as from a gilt and scarlet cage; silent, speak your name, cry— Love me.

Lord, when you send the rain think about it, please, a little? Do not get carried away by the sound of falling water, the marvelous light on the falling water. I am beneath that water. It falls with great force and the light Blinds me to the light.