by Mike Soto
Gratitude inscribed in gold,
carefully thought out dedications
on plaques for cargo passed safely
across the border. Black hats stuffed
with dollars, copies of recently
obtained deeds & passports.
Some arrive in monster trucks,
others in vintage cars with airbrushed
murals on their hoods paying homage.
Those who believe more & more people
seek Malverde’s help for distorted
reasons say nothing. Don’t say anything
about the vendors selling keychains,
Malverde wallets, the rows of plastic busts.
Consuelo skirts thru the crowd,
moves in like a cloud over the day
to darken it. She recognizes the faces:
the man with a flattop in a black
leather jacket, the one with the face
of an iguana, the other wearing
mirrored sunglasses had a diamond grill
that read CHANGO when he smiled
at her. Consuelo gets close to the man
with the flattop. For a moment he stares
right at her, but can’t place who
she is. Consuelo holds her hand out,
shows him a prickly pear split down
the middle, its ultraviolet redness
irresistible. He can’t help but reach
for it & shock his hand with spines.
By the time he looks up, his eyes
are yellow, the room is lit with
faces trying not to look,
& Consuelo is in the street thinking
how much better the chapel looked
hollowed out, the bright hum of its
emptiness, the ecstasy of landing
in front of those walls, pushed by
a storm into that space Topito
had smeared—the delirium.
Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs
1
If every star is a grave, I’ve held tunnels
against the windows of trains when they
mirror the face of me trying to look out.
2
If letting go is a kind of light, I’ve floated
candlelit ferries away from my fingertips,
watched them invade my dreams to stretch
the vanishing point back a few miles.
If letting go is a kind of light, the live handles
of a kettle once burned me, blackened
copper was once the night, & afterward,
until the day they unwrapped the bandages
from my hands, I slept backward—awake
in my dreams, asleep in the so-called real.
If letting go is a kind of light, I’ve set fire
to mansions, memories no longer
tracks to follow, every picture a horse on
the ground writhing from black to burned.
3
If the Dance of Death means love has lured me
into a black Lincoln whose body has been polished
to ring the entire road back, then I’ve deflowered
the muse in the back seat, bribed the black gloves
of a driver to go around the block a few times
before arriving to the porchlight of a house
I always knew was mine. If the Dance of Death is
the pope, president, pink corner store prostitute,
two-stepping to the same song played backward
& slowed down; if the Dance of Death is a square
inside a circle no one escapes, some play by rules
& die with regrets, others say fuck rules & die
astonished—I’ve let a skeleton with a third eye
take me by the wrist, I’ve danced in Death’s
strobe light with hundreds of others who needed
to unwind. If the Dance of Death means I’ve been
saying Yes to the same Skinny Lady in the silver dress
that has made her lucky for thousands of years—
I’ll weigh my heart against a feather at the scales
& win. I’ll greet the end with the swagger
in my heart jeweled & intact. I’ll hold hands
with the factory worker, the woman who
Hula-Hoops at the light for money. If the Dance
of Death means I’ll use my last Yes to leap
the space between reason & belief—I’ll fly
out of this life as only a swallow trapped
in the rafters can. If I step thru my front door
& find no floor to speak of I’ll sing Cielito Lindo
all the way down. I’ll tell the skeletons holding
my hands it was me who turned over all
the tables & laughed maniacally in Death’s
banquet hall. If the Dance of Death
descends on the distracted
faces of man—I’ll be fine, this whole time
I’ve been a wrestler who entered the ring
only to have his mask taken off,
so I could be naked, humiliated, robbed of all
sarcasm—so I could finally put down the gun
& pick up the fight. If the Dance of Death
represents the courtship between matador
& minotaur, if the allegory means none of the stars
are graves & letting go is not a kind of light.
Death the Coppersmith
Death stared at me like I was one
of those clocks with a bird in its belly.
I turned my back on his handshake
to run but a gun on a table blocked
the way out. I knew the game had
changed. A prayer lit immediately
on my lips:
Malverde, tú que moras en la gloria y estás muy cerca de Dios, concédeme este pequeño favor: llena mi alma de gozo, dame reposo, dame bienestar, y en los espacios más oscuros, hazme dichoso.
The note next to the gun read:
Eres el rey—Consuelo,
in her handwriting but her hand
was forced, you could tell.
Pearl handle, silver fixtures, my first
& last name engraved on its handle.
Outside, the bright grind of our footsteps
signed our fates to the showdown.
It’s true the tiny hourglass that stood
between us told us when to draw.
It’s true the hole I made of his left eye
with my first shot was the only one I got.
I fired over and over but my hand
veered left to miss him every time.
All the holes he put in me, one
after the other, leaked with my
life & the last thing I remember:
Death with one eye coming
toward me, the copper kettle he
carried turning black then green.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Thank you to the editors of the following publications where many of these poems first appeared:
The Arkansas International: “The Dead Women”
Birdfeast: “Everyday Tunnels”
The Boiler: “Paloma Negra or, Consuelo’s Mistake”; “Fue El Estado”
The Carolina Quarterly: “[Let the rifle sleep & take the path]”
The Cincinnati Review: “Dressing up a Drug Lord”
fields: “Instructions or, Consuelo’s Yes”
Fou Magazine: “The Invention or, Consuelo’s Explanation of the Third Eye”; “Laundry across Balconies or, Deciding to Fold”
Fugue: “Mercury Topaz”
Gulf Coast: “[To say I love you put a bird on a wire]”
Hobart: “[Aluminum children run holding snakeskins up]”; “Topito’s Fate”
Hot Metal Bridge: “Breve Historia”
Huizache: “Breaking an Open Window”
Interrupture: “Consuelo’s Vision”
The Iowa Review: “[The first time
I saw Death her dress]”; “[A dung beetle climbed out of the dead]”; “[Got out of the Datsun, found myself]”
The Journal: “Death the Coppersmith”
Michigan Quarterly Review: “[At the top of the Ferris wheel, the city]”
Moonstone: “[Looking to get my name written on]” “Ampersand Kings”
New Delta Review: “First Supper”
PANK: “[Sixty-eight were found without heads]”; “Missing (Consuelo’s List)”; “Blank Chapel or, Consuelo’s Mistake”
Rust + Moth: “Fog Having Tea with a Graveyard”
Poetry Northwest: “Hourglass with Bat Wings”; “The Useful Rituals”; “Topito”
Radar Poetry: “[When the firing squad lined up, honey]”
Shenandoah: “The Next Life”; “Consuelo Gone”
Thank you to Maria Chelko and Claudia Cortese, whose close reading helped shape many of these poems. A special thanks to Kelsey Shwetz, whose insights helped me finish this book.
Thank you for the love, support, & comradery that helped pave this book’s path: Diego Enrique Flores, William G. Lockwood, Rebecca Satellite, Lux Ruiz, Martha Elena Eyzaguirre Ordóñez, Anna Stockwell (for the Useful Rituals), Sophia Sunseri, Boris Tsessarsky, Joe Milazzo. Thank you to Vermont Studio Center, and my peers of VSC April ’19. Thank you to my peers & teachers of the MFA program at Sarah Lawrence College. Thank you to Suzanne Gardinier for reading this manuscript’s cards.
Many thanks to Will Evans for his faith in this book, & to my family for their love & support.
In memory of Nevada Hill & Thomas Lux.
MIKE SOTO is a first generation Mexican American, raised in East Dallas and in a small town in Michoacán. He is the author of the chapbooks Beyond the Shadow’s Ink and, most recently, Dallas Spleen. He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, & was awarded the James Merrill Poetry Fellowship by Vermont Studio Center in 2019. A Grave Is Given Supper is his debut collection of poetry.
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AVAILABLE NOW FROM DEEP VELLUM
MICHÈLE AUDIN · One Hundred Twenty-One Days
translated by Christiana Hills · FRANCE
BAE SUAH · Recitation
translated by Deborah Smith · SOUTH KOREA
EDUARDO BERTI · The Imagined Land
translated by Charlotte Coombe · ARGENTINA
CARMEN BOULLOSA · Texas:The Great Theft · Before · Heavens on Earth
translated by Samantha Schnee · Peter Bush · Shelby Vincent · MEXICO
LEILA S. CHUDORI · Home
translated by John H. McGlynn · INDONESIA
SARAH CLEAVE, ed. · Banthology: Stories from Banned Nations ·
IRAN, IRAQ, LIBYA, SOMALIA, SUDAN, SYRIA & YEMEN
ANANDA DEVI · Eve Out of Her Ruins
translated by Jeffrey Zuckerman · MAURITIUS
ALISA GANIEVA · Bride and Groom · The Mountain and the Wall
translated by Carol Apollonio · RUSSIA
ANNE GARRÉTA · Sphinx · Not One Day
translated by Emma Ramadan · FRANCE
JÓN GNARR · The Indian · The Pirate · The Outlaw
translated by Lytton Smith · ICELAND
GOETHE · The Golden Goblet: Selected Poems
translated by Zsuzsanna Ozsváth and Frederick Turner · GERMANY
NOEMI JAFFE · What Are the Blind Men Dreaming?
translated by Julia Sanches & Ellen Elias-Bursac · BRAZIL
CLAUDIA SALAZAR JIMÉNEZ · Blood of the Dawn
translated by Elizabeth Bryer · PERU
JUNG YOUNG MOON · Seven Samurai Swept Away in a River · Vaseline Buddha
translated by Yewon Jung · SOUTH KOREA
FOWZIA KARIMI · Above Us the Milky Way: An Illuminated Alphabet · USA
KIM YIDEUM · Blood Sisters
translated by Ji yoon Lee · SOUTH KOREA
JOSEFINE KLOUGART · Of Darkness
translated by Martin Aitken · DENMARK
YANICK LAHENS · Moonbath
translated by Emily Gogolak · HAITI
FOUAD LAROUI · The Curious Case of Dassoukine’s Trousers
translated by Emma Ramadan · MOROCCO
MARIA GABRIELA LLANSOL · The Geography of Rebels Trilogy: The Book of Communities;
The Remaining Life; In the House of July & August
translated by Audrey Young · PORTUGAL
PABLO MARTÍN SÁNCHEZ · The Anarchist Who Shared My Name
translated by Jeff Diteman · SPAIN
DOROTA MASŁOWSKA · Honey, I Killed the Cats
translated by Benjamin Paloff · POLAND
BRICE MATTHIEUSSENT Revenge of the Translator
translated by Emma Ramadan · FRANCE
LINA MERUANE · Seeing Red
translated by Megan McDowell · CHILE
VALÉRIE MRÉJEN · Black Forest
translated by Katie Shireen Assef · FRANCE
FISTON MWANZA MUJILA · Tram 83
translated by Roland Glasser · DEMOCRATIC REPUBLIC OF CONGO
ILJA LEONARD PFEIJFFER · La Superba
