Looking for my Abue’s enchilada recipe
I find a lacquered bookmark.
1946–2020 Carolina Ramirez Martinez
Life marked by arithmetic
a simple subtraction
one plus grief is less than
one year without seeing
her in a cargo-less train
stuck with a calcified scenery
saying If it’s my time to go,
then it’s my time. I’m at his service.
But the whistle corrects
I don’t want to die yet.
I don’t believe in stars
but she was a Pisces,
like me, except she
tilled sadness with a comb
into her curly-haired-bun
cherubfish scales flash
where her heart used to
beat myself for how it ended
burning the sauce
the needling of my negligence
of her last hours clutched
by my squinting eyes that won’t
quit trying to see
where her anxious hands, one
grabbing the other tightly,
have gone
saying goodbye doesn't mean
we won’t see each other
the bookmark reminds me I should
drink all the platitudes made
up to handle death
like I’ve swallowed pool water,
hit the concrete with both knees
& smiled after a man pulled me
out Abue, are you afraid of la muerte? No Lindita. What did you feel before you
were born?
I wonder if she was ever loved
the way she wanted.
In an unaddressed letter left in her
drawer:
No dije nada. Me hice pendeja.
I never heard her curse
yet she wrote pendeja as if
there was no delicate way
no other way to say
but there’s no need to ask
she didn’t send the letter
loyally remitted all offenses
She just laid boca-abajo
like a newborn búho
in a sterilized bed.
It helps her oxygen, they said.
& there’s no need
to state it didn’t.
She must be on the balcony now
where Tia Coco said she hung
out remedies for transgressions
committed against her
hair a bird’s nest, hooked
back beneath a chiffon
coffee-stained blouse.
A Caguama on the floor
keeping her company.
I gather a few wide guajillos,
three colas de chile de árbol,
a pizca de chocolate
watch the chopped onions bounce
in hot oil like fallen teeth
in the summer concrete.
I am missing something
typing Abue into my phone
I remember I must work
from memory
Juania Sueños is a cursi Chicanx. She is bad at writing bios, but excellent at finding peculiar objects on sidewalks. She holds an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from Texas State & other boring credentials given to her by institutions. She is a translator of Spanish works. She co-founded & is an editor at the non-profit publication Infrarrealista Review. Her work has appeared in Acentos Review, New York Quarterly, Sybil Journal, The Skink Beat Review, and Porter House Review. She will serve as the 2023 Writer in Residence for Texas After Violence Project. She was the 2019 recipient of the Editorial Fellowship from the Center for the Study of the Southwest. Juania is currently working on a novel based on her family in hopes of highlighting the West’s impacts on Mexico. When she is not cuddling her newborn Artemio and chihuahua Chan, Juania is writing about the occupation of spaces in-between. She is a migratory bird from Zacatécas.