Steven Alvarez

radical / avant garde / poet of color

to be radical / to be experimental / fundamentally positions a kind of marginality to mainstream practices / a correlation to the systematic marginalization poets of color live experientially / lived experience and experimentation emerging consciousness / bounded by words internalized from languages intersecting at borders / as always bound by these linguistic interactions between and through languages / conflicts and congruencies of languages / dynamically pushing back against the power to marginalize / to make for innovative poetry 

 

Pancho EL PRIMERO / to La Marcaida / Sinaloa // think I smell you / taste yr eyes / dream yr brown hands / groping a map of Tetaroba / open my eyes / see yrs still closed / kiss yr lids w/ thoughts untied / yet only the deepness inside me knows-- / missing the smoothness of yr warm neck / bids me to forget me in you more / fingers opening as roses & sudden / images descending / countries reathing / winds rise / hear yr breath / you breathe: tight (& writhe) / exhale / & my stomach shakes / paint any monstrosities you want / jellybean / poets all the same / words no action / ¿ow to speak? / wish w/ pages of boulders // yes Pancho EL PRIMERO / to La Marcaida / owned by the State / decidedly chose to write // machines speak loudly / definitively // call me call me call me Pancho ordered himself to follow / his desiring destined bones / toward the nude whose back / [margin: La Malinche] / faced his front / entered her / vigorously pumped / dispatched / thoroughly woke her / though considering / nothing else / she woked / turned her glance-- / seemingly expressed a kiss // Pancho dismissed this because a priori his breath / reeked open-mouth sleep / even worse as he sleeps w/ his mouth open // Pancho cd write / wrote/ read / sometimes instead / cloudpiles / hear train choo chaos desmadre / sun shines / clouds run / the blue blue blue / kind can't stand divided / MS letter holdings of Pancho Chastitellez estate / 19 Jun 2000 // Chaley to Pancho // see Olson: recognizing that writing & geometry are always entwined / connected // shapes of letters reflect cultural notions of spatiality / Euclidian space in our letters we inherit mostly from Greece by way of Rome / don't write boustrophedon / nor hieroglyphically / y liverty y susto for algunos // el conquistador es la figura que domina la historia de los años iniciales del contacto hispano-indigena/ y el conflicto dominante es el desequilibrio de la Antigua sociedad prehispánica sometida a un NUEVO ESTADO de cosass-- // PHYSICAL ENJOYMENT Tío / ¡Ay! reason Chastiteyes: / both reality & process how to operate / yes // nothin I cd be / trope / creature from second stage of-- / no more than s-some creature crowing / over own triumph over incoherence // heard this from una ruca cryin / cryin / cryin: // que ya te crees tanto . . . tú eres de Amurika / ya sabes hablar ingles y todo eso // think abt Quetzalcoatl / my true conquistador / is that it helps me / take my mind / off things by / doin something w/ me / sometimes my sweet conquistador / promises that we will do something / & then we don't do it / my gentle conquistador makes fun of me / in ways that I don't like / I wish my darling conquistador wuz different / O BUT WHEN I AM . . . / when I am w/ my adequate conquistador / I feel disappointed / & when I am w/ my antigovernment conquistador / I feel ignored / & when I am w/ my reformed conquistador / I feel bored / & when I am w/ my symbolic conquistador / I feel mad / & I feel that I can't trust my habitual conquistador / w/ secrets b/c I'm afraid my feigning conquistador / wd tell my parent/guardian / & when my abnormal conquistador / gives me advice / my soft conquistador makes me feel / kind of stupid & ashamed / I wish my parliamentary conquistador / asked me more abt what I think / I wish my necessary conquistador / knew me better / I wish my loathsome conquistador / spent more time / w/ me

 

ENTER CAVE | | . . . in the beginning was the DEAD . . . | | McTlán / al Norte / AZtlán | vivid [sic] desert / sand / heat / vacancy | “no eres betwixt or between cabrón | “brace yrself coz I’m the Mex next to más | “& images flicker & pass pos: | “mucho maas deeper pues . . . | “¿ye want carnitas ? / ye’d better respect my aGuad-loop ¿eh? | “¿ye don’t respect her? / & I’ll send ye right to yr ma . . . dray” |
& there upon | fewer than few postcards | hates writing postcards dislikes limited | space generic greeting hi here’s what I see everyday sd | hope you enjoy yr monsoon see you when I get back sd . . . | how insipidly impersonal . . . y tengo sed | marble hand /nothing | like that & alive / deeper deeper | sloppy pelotas deeper | pain / groping wild nail | driven deeper then | extrapolated terrible thing is | broken fists gripping pit deeper still yet . . . | maybe this falls from | broken fists | further deep into McTlán | & sweaty brows that forget | broken fists | & humbleness two tumbleweeds/ |
M | c | T l | á | n | | broken fists | / branched in union / branched | broken fists | as one / one sickness / dry / deeper | broken fist | & scorched union | & scorched hands holding firm stopped stopped |
up Chaley heard: | ¿how calm wd one feel? | ¿how scorned? | ¿how separated? | then down loosed he fell deep & deeper into that plumpy shit McTlán | ¿how learned? | alas all wd say
alas | alas general dismay | alas wish for more rhymes | somehow beside | alas | alas | alas wings | alasssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss | sssssssssssssssssssssssss | yet called twice to something nay | tain’t no sin | take away yr skin | & walk walk walk away in yr bones |
into nothing | nothing [double struckthrough] | before arriving in | McTlán | aL | nORTE | AZtlán | dismay | dismay general no dismay O | O |
Chaley arrived presently— | deeper into pool of cess McTlán | skyscrapers / shadows / smoking obsidian mirrors | upward looked noticing INFINITY parked nearby | others stopped to marvel as well | all saw how water held infinity above her | all saw how | all saw how | Chaley had to conduct himself w/ controlled | elegance say nay to frantic exuberance | made way up toward swell of earth | little mound | O | O |
O O | maybe hill | maybe grande | hell if Chaley wd know | made his way up there & found | that pyramid | yeah imagines his surprise | think of that shit | pyramid grass grown over here | so you know ain’t like no complete fiction | tell you what—C | O | O O O | O | O O | O | OO | O | O |
OO | O | O | O [double struckthrough] | O | O O | O | O |
they | took that castle dismantled | stones from this pyramid to build a church down the hill O Holy Rompecabayza | & C: read abt another one conquerors built & the church takes those stones down to makes that | Tlatelolco’s model green |
O O | soundtrack & lesson this like | ¿asking for a goddamned lesson? | M c T l á n ’ s p l e a s u r e s | give me a lesson & we’re waiting—two demons platicando | ¿waiting for who? | looking at one another / away / | & A HUEVO GÜEY—away | fase uno: waiting to become / human dead / ¿zombies then? | fase dos: stacked ourselves w/ wit ¿what part | of illegal don’t ye understand beaner? | for these demons nothing but living dead exMexes | & indeed upon inspection w/ exes in their eyes | ¿we’re what? | waiting | simultaneous: | waiting to go [double struckthrough] | home [double struckthrough]
Steven Alvarez is picture. Steven has short dark hair, faint mustache and goatee stubble, and dark eyes. Steven looks straight ahead, smiling with closed lips. Steven wears a dark felt hat with a short brim all the way around; the cap of the hat is not visible. Steven wears a white cotton henley shirt with three translucent brown buttons, the top two of which are undone. Upon the shirt is printed the image of Our Lady of Guadalupe (Nuestra Señora de Guadalupe), in canary, ochre, and black, with the white cotton ground showing through in negative space. Steven wears an unbutton suit jacket with notch lapels, the collar slightly raised behind the neck. The jacket is of a gray twill, possibly a sharkskin or hopsack weave.

Steven Alvarez is the author of The Codex Mojaodicus, winner of the 2016 Fence Modern Poets Prize. His work has appeared in the Best Experimental Writing (BAX), Berkeley Poetry Review, Fence, Huizache, The Offing, and Waxwing. Follow Steven on Instagram @stevenpaulalvarez and Twitter @chastitellez.

 

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