Mónica de la Torre
Gated Community
1.
As a serviceman wounded in combat
I’ve earned my right to peace and quiet.
My Chihuaha has little teeth, like the Viet Con.
You come close to her and she backs away,
It’s when you’re leaving that she attacks.
Sneaky little bastard.
WELCOME TO THE HOUSE OF TERROR.
Bully.
2.
I played some psychology with him.
I said some lowlife scumbag had eaten all the fish in the pond.
Don’t call me that, he said.
You said you hadn’t been fishing, I said.
They’re a bunch of liars, I’m telling you.
Muy bonita su pelo.
3.
I was looking out the window when I heard him unzip his pants next to me.
My gaze fixed on his half-dyed hair as I aimed at his head with my handbag.
4.
I paid twenty dollars to wrestle a bear.
Three hundred for an ambulance to the nearest E.R.
9.
Memories Is Moving.
“Step back in time.”
Memories: You have time to stop.
U-Turn.
Mind-Set
As if language made the image legible,
and credible, not edible, though consumption
is… We know—
we’ve consumed enough consumption
and have grown tired
of the hostile environment
of the environment.
People read the paper in the morning—
at night they turn to fictions.
What kinds of dreams
would reversing this simple habit
precipitate.
Speak the language
of what had heretofore
been unsaid.
And spare us of the illustration.
We’ve seen it before.
And speaking of commitment—
Memory is an asylum, a dream we try to decipher
while still asleep.
The joke she botches
every time she tries to get it right.
Mónica de la Torre is author of the books Talk Shows (Switchback, 2007); Acúfenos, a collection published in Mexico City (Taller Ditoria, 2006); and Public Domain (Roof Books, 2008). She co-edited the newly released anthology of post-Latino writing Malditos latinos, malditos sudacas: Poesía hispanoamericana Made in
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