Jacob Ramirez
I pledge allegiance to Amerika, a translation of shattered song.
I pledge allegiance to Amerika, a translation of shattered song.
I pledge allegiance to Amerika, a translation of shattered song.
For the tongue is code
for wrath and ecstasy,
the accent is a blur
of gods and gold.
The conquistadores fly their sails,
surfbirds before land.
Teotihuacán summons a sermon of nature’s first song,
her garden weaves its leaves
under ocelots languid with lilies
with hummingbirds milking white laelias
and nightjars burst
from lemon trees
in the loam
warm with wombs
under pyramids.
Stones eclipse the horizon
before the storm
of Spanish ships
crashes into a century
crashes into a century
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In Amerika
la Bruja sings Santeria,
her blues in a key
of elegy she moans
her bruises, she heals
to kill the eagle
igniting feathers
with chili powder.
She throws fire to the wind
and her rooster plucks and picks.
The sparks become a bird,
Quetzalcoatl slurring slithering
writhing in clouds each scale
a full throat of sky.
Outside, her feral children
dance folkóriko
in palm leaf dresses
and deer horn crowns
holding pistolas
to and scavenge the night
for salvation and she invites me to her glass table
with its chorus of candles singing
devotion to the moon, her cheeks
the bark of sycamore in October.
She says ‘Pour the sacramental
wine before lechuza comes for you.’
We drink until the owls carry me past
the winos swaying with angels
around the liquor store, IDs fallen from pockets from sweat pants.
Ay! Yo! Gabriel, Miguel, Juan! Pssst! What up in the alley?
No hay Jesus. No hay doctors.
No hay salvation. Hay barrio.
Hail Mary Full of Grace,
the Lord is with Thee.
Blessed art thou among
the barrio, the factories
and fields reek of dreams
rotted as the diabetic heel,
sour with the stench of promises
rabbit-punching you in kidneys
like fly-weight boxers or novella
teens who love into the bench seats
of lowriders as ricos push into the wombs
of rucas and priests who lecture women
on sin loose as Lady Guadalupe
brewing magic black as Bible leather.
She reads her horoscope singing You’ve Got to Change Your Evil Ways, Baby.
Her words pepper the sky with caw,
a murmuration of crows, murderous,
she tells me there is white magic
in mothers crying
whose bellies bare fire
in the indigo night
like chimineas
burning orange
in the barrio.
***
Jacob Ramirez earned his MA in creative writing with distinction from England’s University of Lancaster. There, he worked under the tutelage of Paul Muldoon and Sarah Corbett. Ramirez earned Lancaster’s 2019 Valedictorian Prize for creative writing. His work will appear in Haymarket Books’ The Breakbeat Poets Volume IV: LatiNEXT (April 2020). Ramirez teaches literature in Sonoma County, California. He lives with his wife and two children.