POETRY

“Guilt Shower” & “Bad Catholic”

By DAVID CAMPOS | 26 MAY 2022

By Viviane Sassen — Image by Toa Heftiba

Guilt Shower¹

Heritage Low	Adoptive High	Adoptive Low
Heritage Low	its performance stylized popular masculinity extracts humaneness only to demand white normativity the first rule of fight club is you don’t talk	manliness sinks into me like tea leaves con cuidado tomo cada respiro I distract learn myself with TV en lenguajes extraños
Heritage High	about toxic rancheras with white friends sing them in your guilt shower wash limpia con humo and pumice stones saca blood reparations required all the men	y con mis botas y cinturón pegué relámpagos y nací con padre hecho en Tilzapotla Mexico que entierren padres nuestros

¹This quadrant is based on Berry’s Model of Acculturation.

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Bad Catholic¹

Heritage Low	Adoptive High	Adoptive Low
Heritage Low	every rain drops split open a sacrifice to an unknown deity we’ve all prayed to each time we’ve fallen	in this fall try para entender lo que sintío Newton the pain before it existed en el sublime de la ignorancia
Heritage High	does it matter if it was Adam’s or Eve’s apple que cayó and told the truth of gravity sure there will be sects of arteries refusing the proofs, las venas gritando herijia	una gota de Lluvia se forma de polvo la inundación de tierra pero Dios te pide que aceptes la agua bendita en tu frente

¹The quadrants are based on Berry’s Model of Acculturation.

David Campos is the son of Mexican immigrants, a CantoMundo Fellow, the author of Furious Dusk (University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), and the forthcoming American Quasar (Red Hen, 2021). His work has appeared in The American Poetry Review, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, and The Normal School. He's the winner of the 2014 Andres Montoya Poetry Prize, and the Annual Prairie Schooner Strousse Award for the best group of poems in Prairie Schooner. He teaches English at Fresno City College. He lives in Clovis, California.

POETRY

Manejo

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Not Estela, /
pigtails & cadence /
of okay mamá...okay papá /
w/o either parent.

POETRY

“Most of the Children Who Lived in This House Are Dead. As a Child I Lived Here. Therefore I Am Dead" and Three Poems

By SUMITA CHAKRABORTY

Next to the black upright piano was a window, which looked out at the blue pansies, which were also sometimes purple, or yellow, like the word contusion.

POETRY

Self Portrait with Rain

By ANNIE FAN

But, /
somewhere: dawn and the hum of hollowing /
seeds planted in dry weather, like a sigh /
or shout or song for when the sky /
breaks open and gives out /
something kinder than light.