Xochiqueztal Candelaria is the author of the poetry collection Empire (University of Arizona Press, 2011). She was raised in San Juan Bautista, California, and holds degrees from UC Berkeley and New York University. Her work has appeared in The Nation, New England Review, Gulf Coast, Seneca Review, and other magazines. She has also written articles for the online journal Solo Ella. […]
Fragments of her poems exist, a line sometimes eight, one scrap found stuffed in the mouth of a mummified cat. Let’s say we know this as we know the cat once roamed light-footed through a garden of hyacinth and violets, inking between the legs of guests, sheer linen dressed dancers, lute players. Everyone drunk. In […]
I threw it and it flew away. It grew surly and phosphorus first, sobbed and wanted to know why. Demanded breezes and geothermal fuel. It fooled no one. It drooled. It sobbed and wanted to know why. I panicked, asked it, stay awhile. It chose a room and borrowed a blazer, […]
Ask the last one what she is waiting for on the beveled street behind the white horses and hypnotists, and she’ll say nothing as she taps the cudgel against her knee. One of the women far ahead in gold earrings and folkloric dress looks like her sister, but darker, finer. Is there something beyond the […]
He takes a pear and bites off the dark bruise so the white meat sparkles in the summer sun and politely he turns it for her so it can be bitten in a new place and they are both crushing and sucking and nodding as if they agree on something.
This is happening in the backroom of the unpainted adobe church, adorned with wooden double doors visible behind us in the photograph. I’m the one in braids shielding my eyes while my sister raises three fingers. A clear day the reason we get to play outside, why there exists another photograph of my […]
In the Ogaden desert, they skim it from muddy water, pour it over cactus meat: ululations crisp as morning birds. * With fossils they tune innards. With tails write. Pause for good light. Let it pass through remains, the Loudspeaker warbling in low tones. […]
The sun’s reflection in a bucket of water just before a sparrow plunges headfirst, its thirst breaking the light into bits. Hephaestus knew this was enough. That we wouldn’t like our noses, those bumps along the chin, thin spear of hair calling us widows, crevasses along the eyes. Why repeat them? Did he think […]