The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: Brother Bullet by Casandra López

sundresspublications

7 years ago

Eclipse: Albuquerque 2012

Brother is my eclipse. The perfect
alignment, one body covering
another. I wish my body more fierce, a shield
to cover for Brother on Bullet night. My one great
regret eating at my brain and heart. Investigate this:
How do I walk around alive when there is all

of this consuming me? Can I name Bullet
moon or is death the moon? What is it that leaves
the stain of fire behind? Eclipse
glasses perch on my nose. Halo of orange. Halo of red. I try to see into the sky,
where Brother is said to be, even as the body
I knew as his was made into particles.
There was no moon on Bullet
night, but maybe that is only memory.
I remember the rain, the darkness,
my fear. The next day I saw no sun, I ate
the clouds, the dampness soaked into my boots.
The moon had nothing to cover, but we were
eclipsed.

Bullet or maybe moon left me with a stain of fire, my badge
of grief, follows me everywhere I go. Sometimes the blaze
is fury. Sometimes it is sorrow. I look to the sky and I see my heart
burning.

This selection comes from the book, Brother Bullet, available from University of Arizona Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Sarah Clark .

Casandra López is a California Indian (Cahuilla/Tongva/Luiseño) and Chicana writer who has received support from CantoMundo, Bread Loaf, and Tin House. She’s the author of the poetry collection, Brother Bullet and has been selected for residencies with the School of Advanced Research, Storyknife, Hedgebrook and Headlands Center for the Arts. Her memoir-in-progress, A Few Notes on Grief was granted a 2019 James W. Ray Venture Project Award. She’s a founding editor of As/ Us and teaches at Northwest Indian College.

Sarah Clark is a disabled non-binary Nanticoke editor, writer, and cultural consultant. They are Editor-in-Chief and Poetry Editor at Anomaly (www.anmly.org), Co-Editor of the Bettering American Poetry series (www.betteringamericanpoetry.com) and The Queer Movement Anthology (Seagull Books, 2021), a reader at The Atlas Review and Doubleback Books, and an Editorial Board member at Sundress Press. She curated Anomaly‘s GLITTERBRAIN folio (http://anmly.org/ap25-glitterbrain/) and a folio on Indigenous & Decolonial Futures & Futurisms (http://anmly.org/ap-27-indigenous-futures/), edited Drunken Boat’s folios on Sound Art, “Desire & Interaction,” and a collection of global indigenous art and literature, “First Peoples, Plural.” They were co-editor of Apogee Journal‘s #NoDAPL #Still Here folio, and co-edited Apogee Journal‘s series “WE OUTLAST EMPIRE,” of work against imperialism, and “Place[meant]“, on place and meaning, and is a former Executive Board member at VIDA. Sarah freelances, and has worked with a number of literary and arts publications and organizations. www.twitter.com/petitobjetb