By Ana Noriega
Art by Sophie Williams
Note from the Author: The songs included at the bottom of each poem are meant to work as music that represents the mood and intent of the piece. Feel free to either play them in the background or listen to them after reading—either way is okay! :)
Memento Vivere
carbonated sunflower following
the weeping air of mother’s soup
boiling caramel embrace
floods abandoned buildings
(paintings that survived the fire
fleeing mice down the subway)
eyes pour a flowing lake
my ocean pulse, a children’s song
Antahuara move my feet,
cannabiniccious melt
(rumination cycling drip over my body
the showers that cerebrally in)
a dream?
many days extend lucidity
words of fleeting dreamscapes
extend to bleeding ears
“Trae más sal, hijita.”
Stagnation & Fugue
My fourteen-year old body
emerges dressed in military badge—
a wounded child crawls to Sunday;
Broken tendon, twisted bone
Lysergic radiance
from every fingernail.
Eternally
Wormy status quo ...
Wishing for a beach house
As I dig a backyard pool;
But impotence breeds gratitude,
From every black stroke
On my healing eyelids
The windows now have water teeth (like the poet once said)
projecting colors upon pavement
little waterdrop on my hair;
Industrial column going home
Grips the monorail,
Sweeps to sweeter dreams.
Anti-Academic Trilingual Reflections on a Passage from Karl Marx’s Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
“Communism is the positive supersession of private property as human self-estrangement (and hence the true appropriation of the human essence)”
-Karl Marx
Is the positive supersession of colonialism
aufheben of a Spanish tongue
yaqa hatun mayukta kutii.
Is the villages peeking beyond the eucalyptus
Y las eternas punas heladas
Para llegar al puquial del viajero.
Es un Santiago, wanka waylaśhmi kan
Exploding passions and breathing lands,
The negative destruction of the apocalypse;
The positive construction of a new world.
