it begins with a poor brown man across a tract of eastern sea | with blood & bread | the breadth
of death and the desert | stones | tomes of dust | parchment & prophecy | the I-40 panhandlers
scrawl his name | in permanent marker on impermanent cardboard | & the drivers cruise by |
planning their vacations to the Holy Land | on their cell phones
then, a king & queen | in this poor man’s name | sent their vessels | lined with men in shining silver
shells | to claim people’s homes beneath the sky | & they called it
uncharted
because they saw no divinity in the land or one another | Raping with sneezes | with viral bibles |
they dragged the border | over old homes | ancestral bones
then, stories | about darkness and the devil | landing in clotted New Mexican earth | red as anger
| form of a ruby | form of a blackened spoon | form of men that become beasts when you dance
with them | during Lent | you must surrender your blood | these stories are beaten into us as
children | this is where rattlesnakes come from | this is where chismes come from | this is where
heroin comes from & nuclear green chile | and where evil scratches on the door at night | watches
you through your window
naturally, we are preoccupied with faith here.
Tori Cárdenas’s Psalm: A History of the Church in New Mexico appears in Flock 22.
N.B.: We recommend mobile viewing in landscape.
it begins with a poor brown man across a tract of eastern sea | with blood & bread | the breadth of death and the desert | stones | tomes of dust | parchment & prophecy | the I-40 panhandlers scrawl his name | in permanent marker on impermanent cardboard | & the drivers cruise by | planning their vacations to the Holy Land | on their cell phones
then, a king & queen | in this poor man’s name | sent their vessels | lined with men in shining silver shells | to claim people’s homes beneath the sky | & they called it
uncharted
because they saw no divinity in the land or one another | Raping with sneezes | with viral bibles | they dragged the border | over old homes | ancestral bones
then, stories | about darkness and the devil | landing in clotted New Mexican earth | red as anger | form of a ruby | form of a blackened spoon | form of men that become beasts when you dance with them | during Lent | you must surrender your blood | these stories are beaten into us as children | this is where rattlesnakes come from | this is where chismes come from | this is where heroin comes from & nuclear green chile | and where evil scratches on the door at night | watches you through your window
naturally, we are preoccupied with faith here.
Tori Cárdenas’s Psalm: A History of the Church in New Mexico appears in Flock 22.
Tori Cárdenas is a Latinx poet from Northern New Mexico. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Cloudthroat, Witchcraft Mag, and Vice.