“When You Ask Me for Levity” by Tania Chen
Tania Chen is a Chinese-Mexican queer writer. Their work was selected for Brave New Weird Anthology by Tenebrous Press, and has also appeared in Unfettered Hexes by Neon Hemlock, Apparition Lit, Strange Horizons, Pleiades Magazine, Baffling Magazine, Longleaf Review, The Dread Machine among others. They are a graduate of the Clarion West Novella Bootcamp workshop of 2021, and a recipient of the HWA’s Dark Poetry Scholarship. Currently, they are assistant editor at Uncanny Magazine and can be found on Twitter @archistratego or https://chentania.wordpress.com/
A Word from the Author:
This poem was influenced by the struggle of migrants, not just the physical dangers in crossing but the reasons why they are pushed to leave their homes and seek a new life. It is a heartbreaking struggle, the Mexican-US border is a fraught issue that whenever the suffering of people attempting to cross shows up on the news it breaks my heart all over again. There are also some thoughts about how for women, especially, the decision to both cross and the risk of crossing are doubled, as well as the issue of feminicides in Mexico.
It starts like this:
I always dream of little open mouths at the bottom grounds for my execution. They're simple: oval-shaped openings with overcrowded rows of pearly whites. If you look closely I might see the chewed-up leftover of a crooked phalanx or a meaty hamstring or even intestines coiling along.
The grounds for my execution are 3,145 kilometers (1,954 miles) of silver barbed wire; mausoleum cement raised barricades; and then, the endless sand dunes like undulating waves. All the way down the beach and into the sea, cleaving the land in two.
With their lack of human footprints, they deceive you into running ahead. Trick you into forgetting that the grounds for my execution are lined with rows of nailed coffins on aluminum walls: year, number, muertes.
The rattlesnakes like coiled traps waiting to spring up; the saguaro providing a sliver of shade, thin like the butcher knife of our abuela. And behind me is just el Rio Grande, as we kick our feet along the waters of the ground for my execution, a storm of painted ladies making the journey overhead. They sail north, then south, and will be the only witnesses at the end.
I pray they'll take my soul with them. Virgencita, Virgen de Guadalupe or, if she fails me, Santa Muerte ven por mí, no me dejes morir sola aquí.
The grounds for your execution, you say, with levity in your voice, and napkin smeared with mole: Do Not Cross, there is nothing there worth dying for.
Like you've forgotten what we're running from.
