Wendy Trevino
Friends
Sometimes it feels like we live
In a huge Etch-A-Sketch
& someone is shaking it
Really hard.
We’re fucked.
You get used to it
& you want to be strong
Enough to feel ok
About feeling weak
In the face
Of what you’ve become
& what it’s going to
Require you do.
& when will that be?
I get tired.
A friend writes, “Heaven is all goodbyes”
& I imagine the goodbyes
Of 700 migrants storming the border
Fence between Morocco & Ceuta
Some using homemade blow torches
Others hurling quicklime & shit.
A couple of weeks later
There are 300 more.
I wonder how many made it.
I wonder where they’re going
& if there’s anyone waiting for them
There.
I wonder why a poem
Where death figures
So prominently
Makes me think of life
Moving freely around
Narrowly missing
One capitalist trap
After another.
Hopefully.
I’ve spent a lot of time
Trying to figure it out.
The connection.
There might not be one.
A world without borders
Without commodities
Would make this better.
Easier to take.
I’ve been told
I’ve mastered the lyric.
It wasn’t meant
As a compliment.
My friend was saying
“Try again.”
Sometimes that’s what a friend says.
Let me tell you:
We can’t individually “win” in this world
& simultaneously create another
Together. Another friend of mine
His mother
Will probably spend
Some time in prison.
I ask if
She’s scared.
“Well all her friends
Are there,” he says.
You can’t argue
With that
Wendy Trevino was born and raised in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas. She lives in San Francisco, where she shares an apartment with her boyfriend, friend & two senior cats. She has published chapbooks with Perfect Lovers Press, Commune Editions and Krupskaya Books. Brazilian no es una raza - a bilingual edition of the chapbook she published with Commune Editions - was published by the feminist Mexican press Enjambre Literario in July 2018. Her first book-length collection of poems Cruel Work was published by Commune Editions in September 2018. Wendy is not an experimental writer.