Pour Vida Zine 2.2 (Winter 2015)

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Table of Contents

"Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say that we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. It has only happened to me like that once."

As interpreted by: Samuel Juarez (klosx)………………………………………………………………………Cover Tatiana Servin……………………………………………..………………….…… “MINE” p.3-4 Christina Ledesma………………………………………………….. “A Kind of Love” p.5-6 Cait Florez................ “Thought Process as I Feel You Kiss the Back of my Head” p.7

Danny De Maio………………………….………………………………. “Lagoon Flames” p.8 Adam Daniel Martinez……………………………………………..…. “Inamorata” p.9-10

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“MINE”

by Tatiana Servin Two people walk into an empty room. Until, two children, not hers nor mine, join with their fledgling voices before their fingers tap on the keyboard. We impede the bonding of their shared computer time; we are we because they are they.

We hear faint whispers, and I nestle into my book. Entering the room implicates me into a shared scene not with the children, but with this woman. Residing in each other’s spaces, the children are our focal point, we their background noise.

They disrupt the once silent, agreeable space we silently agreed to engage in. Now it’s their room and we are the intruders. Rules are written in the interiority of the space. Agents alter codes simply with their presence. We share a granite slab for a desk so it’s our desk, along with the two kids, unrelated to the woman who is working, but preoccupied by the presence of them. The two kids whisper as they explain what appears on the computer screen.

I notice a sound. The woman next to me must have picked up on it too, since she walks over to shut the door. We noticed a sound, joined by the apparent link in time at which we both noticed the interruption. We are we still.

In silence, I still speak. Silent work constructed in a mutuality of terms made by signs that need no verbal articulation like this book or highlighter.

I notice them sharing a bond by what they collectively see, no words at first. A boy walks into our space addressing her so now it’s their space.

There is silence, and then an enactment of what seems entirely unrelated.

“I ate the vegetables,” “How were the vegetables?” I wonder what my writing of this scene adds as an element akin to the pleasure of their gaze on me. I am once noticed by them, and not noticed at all, which allows for natural discourse to unfold, but it’s not really natural discourse, is it?

Since the presence of me alters the events.

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They receive the gaze of the person which is both her and not here, while I lie somewhere in the void free to write what I will. This all seems like an invasion. I enjoy the conversations that are not meant for me but mine by proxy. I listen to what the other person is saying without an emotional filter, peeking into the words behind their words. The sides of both people are so clear from the outside, intimate even.

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“A Kind of Love”

by Christina Ledesma

He controls my heart And he knows it, Kind of love

Codependent, Unhealthy, Fall in so deep, Kind of love

You forget How to be, Kind of love

Insecurities, Telling you He’s a bad man Kind of love

But he’s unlike, Any man you’ve met Kind of love

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Human being Created, With a heart of gold Kind of love

An unselfish, Work on you Kind of love

Breaking patterns So you can Love him Kind of love

Fall in love With you Kind of love

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“Thought Process as I Feel You Kiss the Back of my Head”

by Cait Florez Do you know how it feels now?

To know that I am finally your feral instinct That I am your permanent marker That I am bleeding through, in black and white?

Oh how it feels to have finally mastered our own secret language The muted one we speak in our sleep Our honest and heart-wrenching conversation of grabs I used to press my skeleton up against your chest every night As if I could break and enter the cage of your ribs I wanted to become a part of you, a piece that you needed Your broken bicycle neck hands, the burgundy blood in your veins And now I am in, and now you make me breathe, with The way you wrap your arm around my waist like a string of Christmas lights The way you rest your firm paw on my soft stomach Though you know it is full of swallowed apologiesSometimes I am still sorry, yet you hold me tightly Like a belief, like every conviction you got from your father I used to squeeze my eyes shut and attempt to memorize this feeling That now, is marrow-deep; I know your muscles like a prayer I read you like a history book that I wrote myselfSomething I touched, and tore, and started four thousand times And our hearts may be sore, but they are safe You are the last certainty on earth I carry you around like an infant, like an overflowing teacup In my trembling hands as I cross the living room of experience I am shaking, I am glowing, I am so eager to succeed I will not drop you

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“Lagoon Flames”

by Danny De Maio

In our days of plotting the demise of our former selves We turn to the flame It is torrid and invasive and welcomes It knocks and we do not unlatch the deadbolt But tear the door from its hinges In our narrow room of fluorescent glaze And we mean nothing to the flame

But there are times, however, infrequent We mend our burns and lacerations In a lagoon under a sober moon Our old scales floating next to crocodilians, ancient and young Whose scars have paid for new days And the flame is understood…

Not to scorch what is us Nor to torch what is not us But to build a fire to eternally warm those who make us Us

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“Inamorata”

by Adam Daniel Martinez Strolling down El Malecón esplanade, I gaze and pick at my cuticles until my right middle begins to bleed. Tiny vessels rupture, pool and trickle like the water in the Rio Cuale. Plummeting to its peril like a fragment in a rockslide, the hangnail decided it couldn’t hang onto the weakening promise of attachment any longer. I don’t blame the dead skin.

In between suckling and monitoring for specks of blood on the edge of the right front pocket of my Levi’s, I watch men walk with women in leisurely fashions. It’s the holding of hands and intimate glances that allow me to fathom the passion of their souls in tandem. Their sacred nights in shared beds and morning-breath kisses at sunrise. Or maybe around noon, after a long night of undressing and careful caresses or private violence, chewing into each other like wild scavengers on ripe carcasses.

I walk deeper into the Romantic Zone in Isla Cuale, away from the ocean and into the scent of al pastor grease and gasoline and dimly lit storefronts on crumbling streets. I attend a Catholic mass from eight feet outside the pews. I can hear the sermon echo in a language that is foreign and intimate at once and I am lonesome. I stare at the porcelain Jesus and Guadalupe.

I enter into a staring contest with a stray cat walking on a rooftop.

Underneath, children practice the piano and violin. I follow another stray into a flea market and buy bookmarks from a local artist. I think of which books I will put them in.

I haggle for two friendship bracelets. One for myself—the other for a friend whom I’ve spent some nights with and I call her the funny little frog in my throat and every time I think of her, I live out the life of a poet. She will not wear the item of friendship and I will not be offended because she doesn’t believe there is such a thing as “white privilege.” I just want to have someone to buy a single souvenir for.

As I think of what book I will be reading while the funny frog is hopping about town, I walk by a gay club and more romance lingers over me. Older men, how lonely they must have been at some point in time. That is the only reason I can think as to how anyone could be as happy as they appear here tonight with the one they love. A few are American and, ironically, they look liberated here.

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I stop by an ice cream parlor and buy myself a single scoop of dulce de leche in a waffle cone. It begins to drip onto my finger with the severed cuticle and I have no one to share in the sweetness so I quickly scarf it down, get on a bus and I sit alone. I will be on my own tonight. And although tonight is just like any other, I will sleep well knowing love is natural and real.

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