On spectators by Mónica Teresa Ortiz
by Allison Adelle Hedge Coke
Hi. I’m Allison Adelle Hedge Coke, a poet born in Northwest Texas Hospital, here for Poets on the Plains. I’ve got some Panhandle Teaweed on the table today and I’m offering a poem titled “spectators” written by Panhandle poet, Mónica Teresa Ortiz.
Mónica is a second year PhD student in Literature, Creative Writing, and Linguistics at Texas Tech University and has authored three poetry chapbooks and a full-length volume, Book of Provocations (2024), a winner of the Joe W. Bratcher Prize from Host Publications. You can find her work in many journals.
Here's
spectators
Milk colored snakeskin swirled into the dirt behind the dumpster. Glittered green glass speckled nearby. I would guess it used to be a Dos Equis bottle. Our neighbors hire men that rumble through the alley with a trailer to rebuild a fence after a storm. It’s spine unstable and flattened along our grass. They probably killed the snake and tossed its headless remains for us to find. I read In the Break, so this poem is a poem about location. Language does not sleep where I come from. But why did you flinch when I spoke Amiri Baraka’s name? As if I reproduced the spectacle and carelessly tossed a serpent on the ground? Those are not my footprints staining the mud. My hands tremble when holding a book. I fundamentally prefer to kiss your asteriated knuckles than believe that love is a vicious thing. Yes, I would rather marvel at the way you sound reading a poem a loud than take the life of a sacral heart. I hope the repair holds up and the men do not return.
Used with Permission
(not previously published)
Lovely piece.
Spectators, asteriated knuckles, language, location, folding in and opening up the ins and outs of investigation, contemplation, query, blocked into imaginative reality with sips of Fred Moten, Baraka, spined up solidly with Kevin Young to boot… as they say; had me at the get-go.
This poem’s lovely dance with language, loss, stunning skittle through atrocity via reptilian life ripped into uncertainty – and love, that mangled beast Love –love placed perfectly ensuring our at-stake values, in a wonderfully perilous integration–in the forefront of viewpoint and perception–bringing all of this incredible wealth of a tribute read center-staged, and riddled into the faraway, into vanishing points in all directions. This phenomenal Spectacle of Spectator.
All of this wild ride and yet the poem is functional, primary, clean and offers interpretation and intense clarity. Held me to the final hope within anticipatory despair.
Deep gratitude to Mónica Teresa Ortiz for such a slinky and superb poem giving me such a great pleasure to share with you today.
Thank you for being with us for Poets on the Plains. I’m Allison Adelle Hedge Coke coming to you with long memories of wide views and remnant finds like this cinematic scenic work.
POETS ON THE PLAINS HOST
Allison Adelle Hedge Coke was born in Amarillo, lived/worked in seven High Plains states, and four more Great Plains states and provinces. She lives and works in California, came of age in North Carolina, and has also lived/worked in Hawai‘i, New Mexico, Michigan, New York, Tennessee and Georgia. She’s authored and edited 18 books including Look at This Blue: an assemblage poem and Burn (written at Marfa during the 2011 fires). Acknowledgements include the Thomas Wolfe Prize & Lecture, California Legacy Artist, the George Garrett Award, Fulbright Scholar, the First Jade Nurtured Sihui Female International Foreign Poetry Award, a U.S. Library of Congress Witter Bynner fellowship, and is a member of the Texas Institute of Letters. She teaches for the University of California Riverside. Books: https://hedgecoke.com
FEATURED POET
mónica teresa ortiz is a poet and critic born, raised, and based in Texas. Their work has appeared in ANMLY, Latin American Literature Today, The Tiny, Poetry Daily, Allegra Lab, the Book Page, Scalawag Magazine, and is forthcoming in Protean and Adi magazines. mónica's poetry chapbooks include Muted Blood (2018), Autobiography of a Semi Romantic Anarchist (2019), Have You Ever Dreamed of Flamingos? (2023), and a full length, Book of Provocations (2024), winner of the Joe W. Bratcher Prize from Host Publications. They live in the Texas Panhandle. https://scalawagmagazine.org/author/monicateresaortiz/
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