| | 
Photos by Katy Brown
AFTER 9/11 | By Joey Garcia No one admits that every breath drags in ashes of unintended martyrs. Call it communion if you are still religious, this mingling of your body and blood with people you normally jostle on the street, each of you wearing that anonymous commuter face. But nothing can save us from the arpeggio of dying and rising, the body's messianic march. And when you expire, who will breathe you in? — This piece was previously published in Tule Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2014
WITNESS | By Joey Garcia I have crouched for hours at the hem of a river, to witness mayflies emergingfrom past lives, unfurling wings to dress the sky for mating, watched them bind the memory of flight into beads sacrificed as oblation to the waters, before dropping this simple life for a sudden, graceful death. And yet, as the ripples shiver wide, I am still soaked in grief, waiting for you to rise, to return to me.
| 
|
DEEP | By Joey Garcia Yemoja is a Yoruba goddess of waterways, comfort and inspirationAs a toddler I nudged a toe into Lake Tahoe, as my mother, aunt and uncle dawdled over sliced ham, potato salad and mangoes. I didn't turn to check, didn't need to. Yemoja's call muted their world. My feet slapped through chill water, like the heel of a drummer's hand on deerskin, backbeat of idyllic independence. Strode straight in, even when sand beneath me swayed, my obedience was opulent. I knew her silky embrace from dreams, from the womb (it wasn't that long before), welcomed the weight of a love that breeds detachment. Yemoya, assessu, assessu Eya me . . . Going down is pleasure, no one tells you that, loitering between dismissal and deliverance the soul disinterred from its servitude. Only those who hallucinate see Jesus, angels or Buddha, the optic nerve thrashing against brain to correlate a story to live with. Real death is a lengthening into nothing, sinking past stories that have named you, into everything else. Yemoya wanted me for that but I was raised from those depths. My uncle's taunt body piercing the mirror, plunging down, breath held long from a childhood diving for abalone in Belize. He laid me out, began the baited count to snare me. Mother screaming, terrified of my father's blame. Yemoya olodo, olodo Yemoya. Pledged to Yemoya, I sailed to the surface. Back in the station wagon, my cousin, Tony, said I steered into the deep like a zombie, like a suicide. My aunt stopped the car and whipped him for noticing and not yelling for help. Decades later, the memory of our Tahoe holiday dripping into oblivion, Tony became a cop. Lure of the deep, I guess. — This piece was previously published in Caribbean Writer
| 
LILITH & THE GLASS CEILING | By Joey Garcia After my interview at Eden & Son, the Boss gives me a tour of His holdings, yammering about established markets: water, wind, light; His experiments in Ag & Zoology, His expansion plans. Says His office has an open door policy, but I should never enter, something about secrets of good & evil— how He's tinkering with the firewall, & unauthorized access is grounds for termination. I didn't take the job. Who cares if He created His company from nothing— without equal access, how could I succeed?
| 
WOMAN WITH CHILD | By Joey Garcia Inspired by a 1930 photograph by Tina ModottiI. Venus matures — her arms curl above a belly so large it lifts her simple dress. I'm expecting the dress is cotton those hands might have picked. Against that future she holds a child of perhaps two, unsexed by the lens. One leg grey stockinged, black booted, pressed to the world where another forms. Each kicking? II. Still life, says the text. III. At St. Bedes, the church of my childhood, sunlit stained glass bled the names of Mary — Queen of Heaven, Ave Maria, Virgin Mother, Mother of Mercy, Virgin of Virgins, Mother of God — on to the head and shoulders of congregants. Radiance seeped into the aisles between pews. Left of the altar, a plaster Mary, stomach budding. On a hip her first — genderless, feet bare, legs dangling. A toddler raising the world with one pudgy hand. IV. That child's eyes plead for release from our attempts to make suffering beautiful. Isn't inevitability enough? V. Years ago, a friend's physician proclaimed: "Hail! You are graced with new life!" confirming the pink voice of cardboard and urine that spoke to her that morning. A secret luxuriated between my lips: I was pregnant, too, but only with myself.
|
 Joey Garcia |
archive | links | contributors | featured books
