TENDER
By Esther Fox
my neighbor told me he loved me when
my keys were stuck in my door,
Jack Daniels dangled from his hands
like some sort of cheap chandelier,
he smelled of my father’s bomber jacket with
his half cigarette in the pocket and
I asked God that I wouldn’t be sold back to
Heaven for a quick grab at my soul.
Last night I cut open a stranger’s smile, said he
Would look prettier beheaded at
the bar, he shattered all sapphire and shame, a wet
stutter against my ankles as I danced
with my mother’s laughter grenades singing
through me, it was my favorite song when
I ran headless in the street past a cop car, pink jacket
fluttering, my breath an angel cry
of white noise and the people having a bonfire
yelled, look at how fast she is going!
I talk to the moon and my dead grandmother
like they are the same prayer and
grief feels like birth to death in slow motion,
that’s why I told the man at the bar how
many I’ve killed like peace be with you, like
an amen that sinned on purpose,
because my friend said sometimes you
have to say fuck you to all the people,
because the phone receiver is backed up with
broken teeth, hoping that violence
will make something tender, something
worth forgiving, but
memory can’t be murdered,
all there is left is to build it a home.
Dear Venus, you said in order to make life
the womb needs flames,
and this body is an effigy on fire- I have
swept last night’s rust to make a
scraped-up halo and screamed into my car
until I become stainless.
Until there was nothing in my hands but love
and some gore.
Until the swallowed rot glittered and
I could say it looks like hope.
I learned that,
canta y no llores means sing, don’t cry,
and there is someone singing outside my window; I
am tapping my fingers against my thigh,
something inside rattles stilled, a hum I could
cherry-pick and keep pressed between my lips,
bruised fruit
mercy
a thing of the past
AND THIS IS HOW WE LEARNED TO SING
by Esther Fox
mother’s tongue:
half American dollar
half home to
Mexico City
love
you
mouth drowning in shredded dahlia with no hands to
make it my language.
give
what you
remember
to the man with the tiny
steel fruit cart-
music from the river
your
grandmother
lost you in
or the
fields
that made your
young hands
red giants grasping
¡cállate! Niña
You will
never
Look like
Them
American dollar you haven’t loved us any for speaking
English
harvest
the gold
from
our shoulders
forget the debris of the dead stars it came from
sing
don’t cry
sing
to the red giants
police kicked into
my brother’s head
for my mother to
kneel over
and kiss
sing
to
that stranger’s
Spanish wet dream
only as fantasies are we valuable enough to live
sing
to that
sweet rose in my hair
the clothes that smell
like my mother’s kitchen
scorched ancho
and
gutted
guajillo
grandfather’s hands buried in labor
the water in the backs
of his knees salt and dirt where his future daughters
rise
love
you
mother
tongue
a bleeding heart melting in our hands
the giant red stains
you leave
the Spanish music
that weeps
I am singing!
look, God
I am singing!
my mother
my brother
are singing
About the author
Esther Fox is a Chicana queer poet and undergraduate student studying Sociology, Creative Writing, and Art at Truman State University. She writes to re-open conversations with the ghosts and haunted houses of her lived experiences, drawing from loss, everchanging identity, and the unspoken. Esther aspires for her visual art and writing to uncover and express to those who view her work the beauty in falling in love with the debris that comes with being human.