[studies in becoming prayer]
by Angela Peñaredondo
illustrations integral to self-commitment does
blood not deserve cooperation&
reunion of tobacco
encrypted caricatures preserved to attachment
of scarcity to its smoke to its local shores
if not we are left in (dis)contents of theatrics
document who survived after folklore
document (re)birth document inherent magic by
locating theft of&from those trees
how notions began that there were none
document deconstruction of high magic
we deserve to want hard as lamentation
love me love me love me as scimitar
as blade flip as fast as knuckle bone as grove
as furrow as nothing short of
alter funerary
masks to feral
address feminine
gods of channeled
rage adapt
consensual power
play dear lies
dear sense&
pressure who hide
in this wool of
genitalia tangle
dear ancestral
camouflage of
strangler fig tree
limbs to one
must bear witness
i chose to lay the rosary
beads down, companion
the sacred mysteries with
the ground. commune
with birds
not bird as domestic
companion, bound to a
solitary master but
sovereign being—
undomesticated,
unrepentant,
penetrating as fuck.
i look for high-soaring
night seers.
through a smaller piece of
the defeathered flesh
of a weaker bird, i probe
what entities coerced me
to believe i adjacent to
a living thing of only
parallel or perpendicular
calibrations.
colonizer and colonized
have come to speak the
same language...the
powerless have learned to
parrot the language
of the powerful. it all
depends on where you
stand and which side of the
scale is weighted.
tell me wild bird, are you?
i was five when mother blamed
the bridge of my nose
underneath arch of my heel:
birthmark seed locus
ecology red corals
disguised as my feet my one
blurry eye has intuition
like an archipelagic crone
circling a bowl
spiked fronds wielded
from blackbody radiation
even as foregrounds fade to
subjugation
mother says it needs to be broken
this nose knows
in another backseat of a white van
boys and my skin lurches
they suspend so i blade
sound i wax fire swallow what’s
left of heavens to protect
personhood need is
boundary is touching touch this
left side of my shaved head
& worship
what i take down
still here aligning talismans:
hawk-eagle stippled feathers
talons of carnivores swamp buffalo
cartilage mother this face
knows broken &soul-laughs
at composition
envision church as archive of
occupation arrowed a crevice of
nationhood primitive hunt
as punishment enclosed
by walls why sumpter animals
pull heavy chains. around
a galaxy
to be tamed
from plant to air to charcoal
what needs breaking script in
racist logic metal chain
again metal rod
wind- swept leaves messages
transport signifying marks
insurgence upon settler colonial tar:
when someone’s
white father shouts
family of monkeys...
to dismember
offer him his fingernail...
mice&mildew of fly paper...
sharp things...
slapping hands...
head down at the table
of your roasted meat
i permit myself
power to feed
what death of your face
where men patron
silence what demands
trap us inside ourselves?
laws denying how I love why
a body blossoms
then expels
Angela Peñaredondo is a queer Filipinx, interdisciplinary writer and educator. Peñaredondo is the author of nature felt but never apprehended (Noemi Press), All Things Lose Thousands of Times (Inlandia Institute, Winner of the Hillary Gravendyk Regional Book Prize) and Maroon (Jamii Publications). Their work has appeared in The Academy of American Poets, Pleiades, Michigan Quarterly Review, Southern Humanities Review and elsewhere. They've received fellowships and awards from Hedgebrook, Kundiman, Macondo, TinHouse, the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown among others. They are Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at California State University San Bernardino. Currently, Peñaredondo lives in Los Angeles with their partner and many cramped plants. Follow them on @domaindenarwhal or www.angelapenaredondo.com