From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Tortilla Skins

In the hot light of your kitchen, ’Uelita, you show me how to
press the thick dough against your popping, aluminum table.
Your hands the size of the tortillas to come, willing the mass to
open as a soft disk. My hands too small to maneuver, to stretch
over it, to pull the dry powder in. I was fifteen and knew you
were happy. Years after ‘Buelito had died, you were a new kind of
woman. Certain eyes. Laughing, traveling, playing cards. Able to
wake and say no, to skip the simmering heat of guisados and
flame-burnt tortillas by the main noon meal. Bake a cake instead,
at night. Crochet and smoke at the same time. Speak up around
the men. Accept a small glass of beer. The dough as cool as your
hands, your red fingernails disappear into the ball. Would you
remarry? I ask. You are quick to answer. Yes, it is ugly to live
alone. Your fingers have memorized this motion, the bend of this
mass. All I can think is how wives in Mexico flail in sick waters, in
tired, wakeful oceans, choppy white crests salting their faces,
silenced and gasping by the slap of spray. Romantic novella
endings are kneaded into the eyes and ears of their daughters,
spiteful neighborhood chisme, the sealing orders from men, sons,
brothers, husbands. The time folds on your face, ’Uelita, the veins
rise on the back of your hands. Portraits in your living room,
bridal framed faces, faint as shells at the end of a flat beach,
stripped of color by the brine of dry sunlight, waiting for the tide
to soak them, turn them, or swallow them. Bone pushing out the
skin at the back of your neck, you bend to your yes it is ugly to
live alone. And we press our tortilla skins to the heat, their faces
down, to cook.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Lavando La Dirty Laundry

’Uelita, we were kneading the flour on your metal kitchen table
when you told me my grandfather had girlfriends.

Measuring granules of salt. You said it explained the day
he threw your ironing into the mud.

There you were, holding the steaming
iron in your hot cement house.

You heard a fellow at the front door, calling for my grandfather
Raul! Raul! Raul? And you let the man in,

seated him in your home,
offered him agua fresca, for the heat.

’Uelito arrives in that moment.
Sees you handing

the fellow a drink,
screams, ¡Lárgate de aquí!

Get Out!

Get Out!
¡Hijo de su madre! ¡Cabron!

Throwing the man and your fresh, hot whites
into the muddy street.

33And he did not speak
to you for days. Left you to guess

what the fellow had done.
Your pile of laundry

flung to a trampled mess.
You gathered it,

left it sagging, soaking in a bucket
for days while the rain kept you from washing again.

Years later, after ’Uelito died,
the fellow came again:

He thought you were cheating with me, he said.
I’d seen him with a girl.

And he thought you and I were
like them.

You tell me this and press the dough into the tin
clang of the table, a metal heart yielding below your fingers.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Música Caprichosa

                   For my Grandmother who wanted to play

Summer 1931, you stood by the door ’Uelita,
only eleven, beads of sweat under your tight black curls

You hid behind the door
had run to your first lesson in piano, your heels

pressed to the threshold. The aunt, esa tía,
the mean one, a step, not blood, was your teacher

and you could hear her sister from the other side of the door:
To that one? Le vas a dar classes a esa largona?

To that dummy?
What for?

You turned and ran home, crushing dirt clumps
beneath your shoes, the black patent dulled in the dust.

You never touched
a piano, or a music lesson after that.

They never asked you or your mother
where you went. Why you missed.

Ramiro could sing. Your older, handsome brother.
Operas, they thought. And the aunts and the teachers

came. Free lessons for his voice,
His rounded notes. Took photos for his trip,

¡Para irse a Hollywood¡ Ese Ramiro! ¡Tan guapo!
And then tissue that should not grow behind his brain.

And there was no money. You tell me your mother climbed
the steps del palacio to beg the governor, her gold-gray

hair pulled back tight, for respect.
Dressed in her long black skirt, like buena gente.

Had never begged in her life. Made that clear,
but he can sing, por favor;

She trembled.
Es mi hijo.

And the governor sent his own doctor,
paid for the boy who could sing

for free surgeries, books, and more lessons
for his voice. You say Ramiro

knew what day he would die—
had read there would be blue fingers

in the books a doctor gave him. And he called out
from his bed, Ya estan negras, Mama! Black!

Days before, he’d chased you down the bus routes
in cold rain.

You had been sneaking bus rides
to see your secret boyfriend, Buelito.

Ramiro was right. That was the day
it happened, the day fingers turned black.

                                       *

Now, ’Uelita, in your translucent sleep,
you pee sometimes, sing, or dream.

Your little sister wakes you with a song
and I see your face again as you whisper

in tune with her. You keep
Ramiro’s photo for Hollywood hanging

on your melon-painted wall,
a head shot.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Translating Birth

My grandmother once told me,
todos mis partos fueron bonitos
of her five births. In Spanish,
the word for birth is parto,
and being raised gringa,
I had been translating words to English

by removing the o. It almost always worked:
banco, bank, santo, saint. And with a, I also had success:
computadora, ador-a. Adore. Flor-a.
But not all words fit this rule. There was no birtho,
and Bertha was a name, not a cognate:
a-bierto and a-bierta did not work—to open is not to be born.

The Spanish for born was nacer. There was no nace.
At least birth and born alliterated in Texas.
Nacer and parto did not. I heard all of my partings were pretty.
Could the language be that wise?
The child parts. Departs? Departe de meant from whom.
I saw the baby as a part that came from the mother.

I could see the opposite of what she said, the ugly partings.
Cuts. Splits. Parte la carne. Se partió por en medio.
Cut the meat. It split itself down the middle.
Me parto el corazón por mis hijos, tío Jorge said.
And on an operating table, he did split his heart for his children.

I ask this of a language where
the heads of pigs hang above sodas
three houses away. Where newspapers print, ¡Accidente!
above bright photos of half-bodies, twisted, red metal.
Where with this same paper,
they wrap the meat you will eat for lunch.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.

From Natalia Treviño’s book “Lavando La Dirty Laundry”

Ulysses Thinks to Explain It

The woman-thing tore back from me:
her anemone touch left our pools of wet to stick

under my leg. Crying, she said, her eyes,
wide with the sight. Your wife is crying, always, Ulysses.

She turned me away, film of her cloak, ballooned.
Even before the first battle, there’d already been rivers—

You know that, Wife. Every day, tears, streaming over your face—
afraid I would leave you, breath-failed, wide-browed.

Your stomach large from the baby. Could have been a double
headed witch who told you things, lies about me, a sorceress

splitting your mind. It was the ocean I could taste,
Woman; wanting no salt from tears in my breath.

Kill and know it was my hand sending in the sword.
With you, silence murdered with no blood.

No echo—I could still love you, Wife. I could soak your dresses,
spin you a fleet, though you work on your strings,

your hands covered in lines, threads crossing one another,
weaving eyes into animals and the goddesses. Save you, you say.

You always weave eyes so big on their faces,
unattractive in women.

—

This selection comes from Natalia Trevino’s book Lavando La Dirty Laundry, available from Mongrel Empire Press! Find more details about the book here!

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño was raised in Spanish by her parents while Bert and Ernie gave her English lessons on the side. Natalia is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation, a writer’s workshop aimed at encouraging non-violent social change.  She graduated from UTSA’s graduate English and The University of Nebraska’s MFA in Creative Writing programs. Her poetry has won the Alfredo Moral de Cisneros Award for Emerging Writers from Sandra Cisneros, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the 2008 Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, and the San Antonio Artists Foundation Literary Award. Natalia’s fiction has appeared in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth and The Platte Valley Review. Nonfiction essays are included in the Wising Up Anthologies, Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She is currently finishing her novel, La Cruzada. Often working the community programs to increase young adult literacy, she has taught classes at women’s and children’s shelters as well as teen detention centers. Having experienced a bi-national and bicultural life, she hopes to raise understanding between people divided by arbitrary borders. She lives with her husband, Stewart and son, Stuart just outside of San Antonio, Texas.

Darren C. Demaree is the author of three poetry collections, As We Refer to Our Bodies (2013, 8th House), Temporary Champions (2014, Main Street Rag), and Not For Art For Prayer (2015, 8th House). He is the recipient of three Pushcart Prize nominations and a Best of the Net nomination. He is also a founding editor of Ovenbird Poetry and AltOhio. He is currently living in Columbus, Ohio with his wife and children.