Technophile
“And the joy and the pain//And they call the thing rodeo” – Garth Brooks
for Lexi
1. There’s a rodeo in Kentucky on the television.
2. What does that mean?
3. I am thinking of you on the lunar new year.
4. Rodeo started as a procedure to gather cattle around 1551.
5. The US empire is only 249 years old.
6. Rodeo is older than the US empire.
7. Rodeo is not older than imperialism.
8. Time for the clown to dash out.
9. The rider might be in trouble.
10. Clowns are people with face paint and loose clothing. Their only job is to distract the bulls while the rider escapes.
11. A bull charged me once. I was probably 12 years old and it was probably my fault. I should have stayed in the truck while my grandfather checked the irrigation lines. But I wanted to know how soil turned in my small hands. The dirt was red clay and left a film on my palms.
12. We call them barrelmen now. Their job is to entertain. Sometimes they hop in and out of barrels. Sometimes they hide behind those wooden crates, trying to avoid the bull.
13. I am not entertained.
14. Distraction is a dangerous occupation. There is always a possibility that the clown can get hurt.
15. Could a cyborg replace the rodeo clown? Arena lights might reflect too harshly off metal or plastic, depending on which material is used. They might move too slow. They might not be funny.
16. Is empire a rodeo? If so, who are the clowns?
17. I am no technophile but can cyborgs really “dream of Eden” or are they the chimeras of empire?
18. Who would you fall in love with? The clown or a chimera?
19. Empire cannot augment our ability to love.
20. You said you are trying to be more kind to machines – that it’s nice to care for things.
Unruly Lovers
June Jordan said I commit to friction, while many will not comment on Palestine. What is the purpose of poetry then? I listen to you praise poems about ______, not a single word on occupation or the abduction of Mahmoud Khahlil!
Louisiana is a landscape far from New York. The swamps of the Gulf Coast are for ancestors, not for prisons. Just ask those in Angola. There is nothing lyrical about incarceration.
This letter aligns with antipoets, whoever you are, longing for lean lines that aren’t a brief history of space or the summer you visited Vermont. We yearn to disrupt, to intervene, to interrupt. I told you I stopped voting years ago, and you wish for me to pretend this land is not occupied. Walter Rodney said that “the ultimate task of the guerilla intellectual is to actively wage a struggle for the terrain of academia, of knowledge production, of knowledge distribution.”
Miguel James carefully wrote a guideline on being against the police. Let us make that our oeuvre.
If you want to be my friend I will decline politely. We need to be comrades. We might need to be family. We do not have to be lovers. I do not have to love you to believe in your freedom. There are no metaphors in this poem. Our relationship will not be transactional. I became a poet because George Bush stole an election and manufactured an invasion.
So… I commit to friction. There might be aching. There might be burning. Are you listening to what I am saying? Turn around and see me, devoured.
mónica teresa ortiz is a poet, critic, and memory worker born, raised, and based in Texas. They are the author of Book of Provocations (Host Publications, 2024) and invite you to commit to the liberation of Palestine. Photo by Itzel Alejandra.
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