Diptych

Natalia Treviño

After Ken Gonzales-Day’s Erased Lynchings, 2006, fifteen ink-jet prints

Amones de aqui oye, pendejiando a toda
madre tu, como tu pinche gueyeh hermano
que no creia que lo iban a ganchar asi
como un marrano en este árbol— te lo
juro, vato. Ya vente mientras no nos ven,
guey porque si nos ven, oye, mala vibra,
nos alcanzan. Esos pinches hijos de su puta
gringa madre. Mira! Aqui la Virgen ya
marcho. No te oye ni madre. Ni tu madre te
oye. No te hagas. No te oyen nadien ni tu
madre, guey. Dijiste que querias
ver adonde fue tal cosa. Ya! Ya! Aqui. Y que?
Que?—La pinche rama, te lo juro que casi
habló, casi lloró como una mama torcida
con so pecho todo jodido. Asi se puso la
rama, guey. Alli fue donde. Tu hermano.
Aqui. No te cagas. Guey. Hijo de su, de tu,
de la madre. Levantate. Levantate. Sabes lo
que les dijo uno d’esos cabrones, alli? Alli:
“No los dejen llorar, esto es lo que lo
chingo.”

Let’s get the out of here, pendejo, messin’
round like a mutha, like your idiot brother.
Didn’t think they’d string him up like a
hog. I swear vato. Come on or they’ll see us
dammit because if they see us. Fuck.
They’ll get us. Bastards, sons of their gringa
puta mother. Look! The Virgen is gone.
She doesn’t hear a damn thing. Not even
your mother hears you. Christ. You said
you wanted to see where it happened.
There! I showed you and what—what—
that long branch, man. I swear I heard it
nearly say something. It cried like a mutha.
All twisted down with her chest torn up
and— It did. That limb, that one. Your
brother. Here. Don’t shit yourself, güey.
That son of a, that son. Of a motherfuckin’.
Get up. Up. You know what one of the
fuckers said right there. Right there: “Don’t
let them cry, this is what he got.”

Born in Mexico City and raised in San Antonio, Texas, Natalia Treviño is the author of Lavando La Dirty Laundry (Mongrel Empire Press). She is an Associate Professor of English at Northwest Vista College and a member of the Macondo Foundation. Natalia completed her Master’s degree in English at The University of Texas, and she also graduated from the University of Nebraska’s MFA program in Creative Writing. Her poems have won the Alfredo Cisneros de Moral Award, the Wendy Barker Creative Writing Award, the Dorothy Sargent Rosenberg Poetry Prize, the San Antonio Artist Foundation Literary Prize, and a Bordersenses Poetry Prize. Her poems have appeared in several literary journals including Borderlands, Texas Poetry Review, Sugar House Review, burnt district, Sliver of Stone, and Voices de la Luna. She has been anthologized as a poet, fiction, and nonfiction writer, with fiction appearing in Curbstone Press’s Mirrors Beneath the Earth, and essays in Shifting Balance Sheets: Women’s Stories of Naturalized Citizens and Complex Allegiances: Constellations of Immigration. She recently completed her first novel, Drinking the Bee Water, a story about immigration and the sacrifice behind it.