Creative Writing & Literature

Ivory 505

by Sarita Sol Gonzalez

When I walk down the drugstore makeup aisle
I look for
CoverGirl Clean matte pressed powder shade Ivory 505
the lightest shade they make
My grandma looks for Classic Tan 450
a sunkissed golden tone
my mom looks for buff beige 125
a warm peach tone
Yet I am still the most güera with
Ivory 505
Since I was little
Mi Familia has called me Güerita
Little girl
With golden curls
Hazel eyes
Light skin
It is meant to be a term of endearment
But some of us güeras
are starting to get a complex
Feeling like an outcast with my own gente
Stumbling over my tongue just to talk with my abuelita
Constantly having my authenticity questioned
Trying to prove that I am just as Chicana as they come
I was born and raised in the 505
A place where my community thrives, lives, and loves
A place where the Sandía mountains Rise out of the ground as if Mother Earth was reaching up to grab our Zia Sun
The 505
where White sand dunes glitter and shimmer like snow in the moonlight
lighter than the sand on the banks of the Bosque
but it is still New Mexico tierra
Just like the dark brown sand from Santuario de Chimayo that heals and protects my soul
the 505
where the powerful current of the Rio Grande flows through
and heals my heart
she sings to me
I know all of her songs
holding my culture close
Every step I make I’m dancing to a Cumbia
Every breath I take is a prayer to La Virgen
Every word I say has a hint of Spanglish
My heart tries to sing boleros at midnight
My ears are always listening for chisme

I can take carilla from mi familia
And yet to some, I am still not Chicana enough
Sometimes I feel just like Abraham Quintanilla:
“We have to be more Mexican than the Mexicans, and more American than the Americans, both at the same time! It’s exhausting!”

I am tired of running this marathon
I am tired of jumping through hoops
I am tired of trying to fit in your mold

My Spanish will always be on the pocho side
My tortillas will never be perfectly round
My looks will never be that of an Aztec princess
But my love for mi cultura will never fade
And this Chicana still carries her Ivory 505 compact in her back pocket

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  Manifest Destiny

by Jesse Begay

1. The Long Walk.

Beneath the moccasins, we are calloused or bloody.
The droplets we leave behind stain the pews like acid,
and leave perfect circles through the cushions.
Tonight, twin biligaana devils will march through
our hogans, while their white-hot shoes leave glass footprints,
scoff at Father Sky’s un-American blue, and tell us of their God.
Tomorrow, Kit Carson will scrape through
the carpet laid over his grave and offer knives and guns,
like these are gifts, as in don’t you wanna be like us?
Today, Lamanite and Navajo dancers sell
camouflaged accents along the highway, and this is
a gift, as in now we’ve made it, as in, Now things can begin,now that we’re beyond the reservation border.

2. Kill the Indian.

For our anniversary,
my boyfriend presses his fingers to my neck
just to be sure I am still alive —
Keep the exonerating evidence around.

Those paper memorial flowers won’t cut themselves.
My tourist traps are roadside crosses.
What else are they good for out here?

They mark the path of King Noah and his flaming hands,
through those flea-ridden bags of flesh
and their buckets of starved corpses.

Are these people, or are these dogs?

3. Save the Man.

The Celestial Kingdom awaits none of us.
Instead, it awaits our liaisons:
geometric blankets, turquoise belts,
and children wracked with homesickness.

In return, Christ sends beach sands as penance
for everything lost to the tribal police –
foot soldiers of the devil and their useless badges.

Apologies, Christ says,
for the mural of the generals
left outside your memorial, but…
Well. You’ll understand when you’re older.
I mean. You musn’t forget your place.
Our dead are statues. Museums. Immortalized.
Your dead are only that — dead! 

4. Scorched Earth.

All things denote there is a God,

Ours is second-hand –
a punisher first, a liar second,
an ego third, a father fourth,
and a man last.

God denotes there is a devil.
I’d know. I can still hear him –
the voice of my childhood summers,
how it howls like coyotes,
and nauseates like snakes.

God denotes there is a Devil,
So here is a parting gift:

A town without a place for our dead,
or even their murderers.

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