University of South Carolina Scholar Commons Theses and Dissertations Spring 2019 dead eye open. Carlos Guillermo Gomez Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd Part of the Creative Writing Commons Recommended Citation Gomez, C. G.(2019). dead eye open.. (Master's thesis). Retrieved from https://scholarcommons.sc.edu/etd/5282 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you by Scholar Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Theses and Dissertations by an authorized administrator of Scholar Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. dead eye open. by Carlos Guillermo Gomez Bachelor of Arts Bennington College, 2010 Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing College of Arts and Sciences University of South Carolina 2019 Accepted by: Samuel Amadon, Director of Thesis Liz Countryman, Reader Michael Dowdy, Reader John Mandsager, Reader Cheryl L. Addy, Vice Provost and Dean of the Graduate School © Copyright by Carlos Gomez, 2019 All Rights Reserved. ii DEDICATION For my mother iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This collection would not have been possible without the careful and honest eyes of: Scott Chalupa, Mark Rodehorst, Ethan Fogus, Maya Marshall, Emylisa Warrick, Catherine Bonner, Charlie Martin, Destiny Hemphill, Trezlen Drake, Cody Hosek, Dylan Nutter, Marcus Jamison, Katarina Merlini, Arianna Miller. This collection, the constitution of my poetic voice, and the love with which I hold poetry would not have been possible without my ride-or-die cohort, the most devoted and sincere poets I know, Joy Priest, Lauren Clark and Catherin Ntube. A most sincere thank you to Samuel Amadon, Liz Countryman, Nikky Finney and Fred Dings, for creating the workshop space that made these poems both a raucous pleasure and most beautiful pain to develop. And to my family—mi abuelita, las tías y los tíos, Los Seis, and Amy—no poem is possible without love, and I have been blessed with all of you. iv ABSTRACT This collection chronicles the youth and adulthood of a speaker, and how those experiences shaped considerations of masculinity, intimacy, and sexuality. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Dedication ............................................................................................................................................. iii Acknowledgements .............................................................................................................. iv Abstract .................................................................................................................................. v La Juerga ................................................................................................................................ 1 My Mother’s First Job in New York City, USA .................................................................... 4 My Father Naked .................................................................................................................. 6 Mother Before God… ............................................................................................................. 10 A Faithful ............................................................................................................................ 12 Jesus Dream No. 1: Yeshua, My King of The Bronx .......................................................... 13 Chicken Tongue ............................................................................................................................ 15 Squirrel ............................................................................................................................... 16 Welcome Home, Mother Soldier ........................................................................................ 18 Como los Unicornios .......................................................................................................... 19 T-2… .................................................................................................................................. 20 Going to the Movies Feels Like the End of the World ....................................................... 22 In the Garden ....................................................................................................................... 24 Account of the Birds as the City is Built Around Them ..................................................... 26 Drift Down the Bruckner, Sept. 11th ............................................................................................................. 27 Ground-Up/Tree-Down ....................................................................................................... 28 Under the Elevated Train .................................................................................................... 29 vi In Transit ............................................................................................................................. 31 American Flag ...................................................................................................................................... 35 Elegy Written During Hurricane Sandy .............................................................................. 36 Cleaning Out Your Bedroom .............................................................................................. 38 The Transverberation of Loss ............................................................................................. 40 Jesus Dream No. 54: Vaya con Díos ................................................................................... 41 English as a First Language ......................................................................................................... 44 The Car Named Grieve ....................................................................................................... 45 Matamos Poetas a Domicilio, Lima, Peru ................................................................................46 Jesus Dream No. 77: In front of the bodega on Zerega Avenue .............................................. 48 Fireworks ............................................................................................................................ 50 Una Madre’s Advice on Marriage During a Destructive Age ................................................. 51 A Morning Under My Skin ................................................................................................. 52 Fear of Small Things ..................................................................................................................... 54 In South Carolina, Thinking About Northern Winters ....................................................... 55 Vigilance ...................................................................................................................................57 vii En suma, no poseo para expresar mi vida, sino mi muerte. -César Vallejo viii La Juerga Before we leave the house, my mother and I pray to a shrine of saints and loved ones. My mother’s father, handsome and murdered when I was one, stands a framed limbless gentleman, combed for posterity. Slave mother and conqueror father in his prayers, Martín de Porres poses among his criaturas. Rosa de Lima wears her harvest in her hair. Before our prayer has ended—an errant flash, from behind a portrait of La Mami, the elder from whom dead and distant children werekept secrets for so long. Mistake. This is a garden party in heaven and all are gathering for a reshoot of the moment. A crooked-haloed Gabriel raises a glass to wobbling amens and says On the count of three say APOCALYPSE say we’re DRUNK say we take our clothes OFF! It’s messy, but this is prayer. This is the asking by simply standing before, and the wistful answering. Say you believe in DEATH and she will come to you on a wild horse! they say. Say you come sent by your MOTHER and no one will know you do not BELONG! 1 Before her eyes are opened, my feet are wet in the liquor-soaked grass, the side of my face is brushed with the end of one of Rosa’s petals. Prayer: a question form of survival. Answer: a choir of dead smiles, returning to their final resting raucous faces. 2 I 3 My Mother’s First Job in New York City, USA My mother’s friend got her a one week job at the bank, and in those seven days, she turned it into a month, then a year, then finally, via temp fence, a permanent post. Safe boxes were opened, her key allowing all other keys to work. Her key was not her key, but theirs. The story had to be that she was handler of the key, who was keeper. She was careful to be trusted, crossing into their vaulted mote, new nativism where she had no treasure to trade for place. She was careful to speak English, even with the ladies in the office pen, lest the brown suit and mustache threatened them with curation, said: “And that would be the story of you.” Call it difficult, plying between their safely stacked world and the open-floor pen she’d spent seven days learning to keep, —but call it, too, Creation Theory. Call a god a god, and if you were me, God, My nomadic God building the time to build a house, 4 turning a seven day job into permanent post. Every morning, she turned the lights on, and saw that it, finally, could be, one day, all good. The journey into what her life in the states could be, into the paradise where money grows. 5 My Father Naked “Kings do not touch doors.” Black leg hair wet. Still in tub. Curtain pulled wide. Come in he’d said. This was not display. A common—not intimate—thing, that