Published in Issue 63.3: Summer 2024
Fernando Trujillo is the 2024 winner of the Laurence Goldstein Prize in Poetry for the poem “13 Ways of Nepantla,” which is published in the Summer 2024 issue of MQR. The award was established in 2002 by a generous gift from the Office of the President of the University of Michigan in honor of poet and former MQR editor Laurence Goldstein.
Lawrence Joseph, this year’s judge, says of”13 Ways of Nepantla”: “the poet imagines a nepantla, the living of a life in-between two cultures. Like Wallace Stevens’s looking at his blackbird, the poem is structured in thirteen parts, the poet invoking their nepantla to ‘Make of me a song.’ It is an astonishing poem, well worth several readings, brilliantly composed, a perfect vocal melding of form and content into the incandescent and universal power of pure song.”
You can purchase our Summer issue here.
I was of three minds,
Like a tree
In which there are three blackbirds.
—Wallace Stevens
[1]
Throats thick with tobacco and mezcal.
Reverberations of violence,
ecstasies and transformations.
Sizzle of nopales on the grill.
[2]
Roaming downtown EP after the OP,
full of drink and the taste of men—
noche de ronda, frightening awake
a black dove before dawn.
[3]
En el instante of being
in two lands
tocayo
was it loss you felt?
Does a body crossing
mark across the body?
[Chorus]
América America,
brazos de agua
swinging from the boughs—
del aire al aire the
varied carols I hear—
[4]
Tía abuela Ñeca rolls out rising
balls of dough in Arizona,
tortillas off the comal,
dozens of fresh empanadas laid
out for the sticky fingers of a child
who pledges allegiance to a flag
each day in school.
[5]
Along the railroad track
one foot in front of
the other on the rusted out
rail beneath Mt Cristo Rey,
pennies laid out, waiting
for the thrill of a roiling
tingle as the train rushes by,
flattening what
was worth so little
to him.
[6]
A penny saved
is a penny less of frijoles
for dinner,
Tencha states,
slaving over a stovetop,
getting a college degree.
[7]
Young flesh
Friday night in Juárez,
delicious cumbia raíz
off her hips,
the beat shakes—
Lupe cutting
up the dance floor.
[Chorus]
América America,
brazos de agua
swinging from the boughs—
del aire al aire the
varied carols I hear—
[8]
Sauce de cristal-formed timestone in the sun
-old capital, son of Aztec and colonizer
holding out a hand to touch its edge. Chingado nieto
de la Malinche reaching up to grasp for the meaning
of blood hating blood in one vein.
[9]
I don’t like spics, says the brown boy
sitting at an overlook on Transmountain,
I like that you look white;
or,
I don’t know why they sent her,
the boss says,
I’ve already met my quota.
[10]
On a cliffside bus,
Veinte poemas in his lap,
condor lazing among the
heights above Iruya.
[Chorus]
América America,
brazos de agua
swinging from the boughs—
del aire al aire the
varied carols I hear—
[11]
A home made in
the pass between the mountains.
[12]
A 3 coo-weaved-counterpoint
at odds and in harmony,
refusing to be caged.
[13]
She sings
sing to me, cántame.
But I tell myself it really means
sing me to me.
Make of me a song.
[Chorus]
América America,
brazos de agua
swinging from the boughs—
del aire al aire the
varied carols I hear—
Author’s Notes:
- The title/structure is inspired by, and the epigraph is from, Wallace Stevens’s “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.”
- “del aire al aire the / varied carols I hear” is from Pablo Neruda’s “Alturas de Macchu Picchu” and Walt Whitman’s “I Hear America Singing.”
- “Sauce de cristal” is from Octavio Paz’s “Piedra de sol.”
To purchase our Summer 2024 issue (available in print and digital forms here.)
Fernando Trujillo (he/they) is a native of El Paso, Texas. His work has appeared with Passages North, The Cortland Review, and Susurrus Magazine. They have been nominated for Best New Poets and Best of the Net. In his free time he likes going for long walks and reading Tang poetry.
