The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

[poem to be read in a circuit]

who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?

the doctor, the psychiatrist, the pastor, the lawyer, the cook, the poet
that publishes decolonial poems, the theorist who says who? the
cisgendered feminists—hi raquelita—the strikers, the memeists, the
ultrakids drinkingshots, the levitators?

who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?

ernesto cardenal, will he cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
will drake cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
will brangie cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
it’s a serious question
i don’t accuse
it’s a serious question
i don’t expect
that would be my question
what must expastors think of women of trans experience?
the famous poets, are they too busy?
will walter mercado cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
will my old comrades cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ like
they cried for so many who have died that we don’t know anymore how
not to alienate ourselves from the quotidian traumas?
will the boricua socialist organizations cry for SOPHIA ISABEL
MARRERO CRUZ? will they show up like they showed up for filiberto’s
funeral? will they defend her from those who will call her crazy, contradictory, unstable?

who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you will cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you will cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you cries for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you will cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
who among you would cry for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ
if she were cisgender

if she were a cisgender man
if she had made 27 albums and had a really cute mansion
if she had been on mtv
if she had 5 books titled
“deconstructing the trans in transgender”
“jorge luis borges’ trans-activism”
“memiors of an transpolitized academic”
“the performative and the puerto rican:
memoirs of my memories”
“medical interventions in puerto rico: a three part saga”

i’m serious
i’m not accusing
i don’t want to save us
or for you to cry because i asked you, ya know?
nor for you to take a sudden interest—even if it wouldn’t feel too bad to
hear her name repeated once or twice—
i’m just trying to figure out what the fuck i should do with such disparities

i wouldn’t have found out either
if it weren’t for my loves
impacts of impacts
chains of struggle without medals or prizes
that’s what i mean when i ask:
that i never would have known

surely her family cried for her
[as a man]
surely they spilled their knots
over their beard filled in by some amateur artist
without a doubt they cried for her and thought of her and submitted her
to the death they wanted

the death they chose so that they could cry in peace
over the life that never had the name SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO
CRUZ

i’d like not to hate them
i have less right than they do
to cry for her
i’d like not to want to scream at them and scream at me for screaming
but surely they cried for her
what do i do with so much silence?
what do i do with so much mourning without repercussion?
write poems? dream that others read them?
that upon reading them they’ll cry not for the poetry but
for SOPHIA ISABEL MARRERO CRUZ?
and who would they be, the criers?
tell me i’m not blaming you
please tell me

This selection comes from the book, elegía elegy, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, LO TERCIARIO/THE TERTIARY, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, WHILE THEY SLEEP (UNDER THE BED IS ANOTHER COUNTRY), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. They received their PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Raquel loves and lives for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.

sta-cox-86a11213’s profile on LinkedIn

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

suprasegmentacionalidades (2)

you are so much more than your translation

she doesn’t understand why my home is not her sanatorio
why oh the ocean is beautiful oh el morro oh

YOU HAVE NOT READ ME IF YOU HAVE NEVER DIED & GONE
TO PUERTO RICO

YOU HAVE NEVER READ ME IF YOU WERE WAITING FOR THE
POEM TO COME OUT IN ENGLISH
you could of course not read me not soulform one dash—mid-me

THIS PLEASURE TINCTURE es aquello fresquería de sarduy prestada
MY SURVIVAL AS POEMS FOR YOUR CONSUMPTION
MY FLESHECHOED AGAIN FOR YOU TO QUIVER

if you have come this far you understand i’ve made holies of all things
i love and in myself abundance of loss wellsupped into cavern(ícolas)
ousness
you have understood what it is to make of loss
but not loss
what it is to drag my words rage swollen and tucked
many in the present shifts of memories crystalizing like sugary pop rings
you have understood what it is to be the bastard before there were family
crests
but not loss

I CANNOT TRANSLATE FOR YOU ANYMORE
I’VE BURNT HOLES IN MY SHIRTS WITH CIGARETTES & FORGOTTEN

This selection comes from the book, elegía elegy, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, LO TERCIARIO/THE TERTIARY, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, WHILE THEY SLEEP (UNDER THE BED IS ANOTHER COUNTRY), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. They received their PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Raquel loves and lives for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.

sta-cox-86a11213’s profile on LinkedIn

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

brutilambona

pendeja para bien
sácale el provecho porque tan alta que te sube
hasta la punta de las uñas de seis
pulgadas tacas asá
estirá tomada del asalto una cerveza liviana
un almuercito sin mucha mayonesa
ella te está haciendo un huequito
en el pre juicio

sabe tanto que no sabes de tanto
pero es claro brutilambona
porque la mides según el
despulga o repulgamiento de las cosas que pone
en su cartera sobre la rodilla
detrás del miramento

cuando ella te asalte tendrás sólo una mirada
apendejada
dirás que brutilambona
pero ella por millas
te alarga las pestañas del baúl
la pintura cambiada del esmalte
de la puerta

tus decorados peores
porque no sabes
andar en puntas
por eso las nubes están tan lejos
porque sólo crees en zapatos funcionales

brutilambona

pendeja in the good sense
enjoy because so tall she climbs you
to the tip of the nails of six
inches heels like that
stretched taken from the hold up a light beer
a lunch with little mayonnaise
she is making you a holie
in the pre judgment

she knows so much that you don’t know much
but is of course brutilambona
because you measure her according to the
de or reinching of the things she puts
in her purse on her knee
behind the looking

when she holds you up you’ll have only one gaze
pendejaed
you’ll say how brutilambona
but she for miles
elongates your lashes of the trunk
the paint changed of the enamel
of the door

your worst decorations
because you don’t know
how to walk en pointe
that’s why the clouds are so far
because you only believe in functional shoes

This selection comes from the book, elegía elegy, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, LO TERCIARIO/THE TERTIARY, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, WHILE THEY SLEEP (UNDER THE BED IS ANOTHER COUNTRY), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. They received their PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Raquel loves and lives for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.

sta-cox-86a11213’s profile on LinkedIn

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

offputtingon

you are offputtingon
sometimes (for me) you masturbate
like covering yourself with the hand so as not to
spray all your feathers and i come
sometimes you leave flown down the bathroom path
and the curtains run
through your fingers because you fall and don’t want
on top of m(e/y) offtakings

if you play a song you’ll also quit over
received calls and i’m without receiving
decisiones i sing and you. he. act basic
your face of

egglaying
or caution quitting

take it off me now and don’t offput
in exchange i won’t take off and i’ll make you
spin like offputtingonputtingoffputtingon

This selection comes from the book, elegía elegy, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, LO TERCIARIO/THE TERTIARY, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, WHILE THEY SLEEP (UNDER THE BED IS ANOTHER COUNTRY), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. They received their PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Raquel loves and lives for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.

sta-cox-86a11213’s profile on LinkedIn

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

(i) penetrate

my arm is the potent organ of my femininity
i can reach my liver with my arm

when i signal [being inside me] i can bleed me
i can create a whole [crack] in my health through
which the fermenting liquids will leave
impregnating the river with their
reeking suficiencies

griefripeish gripadjustment.

i’ll rend your sun from it’s second shadow(earth)
and when so much dustlight is made of the world
i’ll take us to the favorite tomb and make us love after
sticking the long finger in our body like a common accusation

This selection comes from the book, elegía elegy, available from Anomalous Press. Purchase your copy here! Our curator for this selection is Tierney Bailey.

Raquel Salas Rivera is the 2018-19 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia. They are the inaugural recipient of the Ambroggio Prize and the Laureate Fellowship, both from the Academy of American Poets. They are also the author of six chapbooks and five full-length poetry books. Their fourth book, LO TERCIARIO/THE TERTIARY, was on the 2018 National Book Award Longlist and won the 2018 Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Poetry. Their fifth book, WHILE THEY SLEEP (UNDER THE BED IS ANOTHER COUNTRY), was published by Birds, LLC in 2019. They received their PhD in Comparative Literature and Literary Theory from the University of Pennsylvania. Raquel loves and lives for Puerto Rico, Philadelphia, and a world free of white supremacy.

Tierney Bailey is a Libra, a lover of science fiction and poetry, and studies Korean in her spare time. Currently, Tierney is an associate poetry editor at Sundress Publications, a copyeditor at Strange Horizons, and a freelance graphic designer. Tierney earned a Masters Degree in Writing, Literature, and Publishing from Emerson College. Tierney is most easily found screaming into the void on Twitter as @ergotierney.

sta-cox-86a11213’s profile on LinkedIn

Tag: elegía elegy

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

[poem to be read in a circuit]

Like this:

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

suprasegmentacionalidades (2)

Like this:

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

brutilambona

brutilambona

Like this:

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

offputtingon

Like this:

The Wardrobe’s Best Dressed: elegía elegy by Raquel Salas-Rivera

(i) penetrate

Like this: