MONI GARCIA / MÁSCARA CONTRA MÁSCARA: 4 POEMS

I Watch Sumie Sakai’s Retirement Match

Poem in the shape of a wresting ring. In the center, the words: "the bell rings & echoes throughout the crowd. everyone counts: once, ten times--all of it sounds like the beginning & the end."

Máscara contra máscara

my entrance astounds.
when I preen into the pulse of night
thousands of hands refract chorus of movement

for the window I’ve invited
them to gather their looking.
the colors I declare:

stain-glass mountained sunrise the dappled
light that plays on a river –
all sewn with my symbol of choice.

to obscure my face I reveal
the eaves of desire that slope from me.
become the favorite version of living

where days do not begin
& end with treading water
my trachea’s scales measure each languid hour;

shape of my outline demarcated
by a ruler’s notches to align
hairs down its divots.

when I step forward tilt my head back
a new birdsong enters
to flock between ribs.

in matches the faces we wager
must prove this science of survival.
ponds of sweat diagramming edges

of lycra amassed for each little war
I refuse towards ruin.
each mask captured I swallow.

imagine: your decapitation.
imagine: the imperfect slit your neck makes.
who will I become tonight?

which sound will tremble
into a newer body?
there are times when loss

has idled too close to me.
scraped its nails in the air
between us. I watch catastrophe

drawn out by my hands from a man.
see them get down on two knees
& angle their head parallel

to the ground that betrayed them;
waves of grief they shoulder unendurable.
I hold their mask grip memory

until I feel it as my own.
here is a rebirth & the self
cleaves to move through it.

They’re Called the Golden Lovers

After an especially grueling first match, Kenny Omega and Kota Ibushi decided they did not want to wrestle against each other, but wrestle together. While the company pitched they call themselves “The Golden Brothers”, Omega and Ibushi chose the tag team name “The Golden☆Lovers”.

& it’s unfathomable how often a hand’s devotion
is mistaken for distance.
that to press a mouth to
hollow of wrist
is being too read into–

actually it’s more like
they’re best friends did you know they train together
but they’re just super close.

is it friendly that Omega first saw Ibushi
draped behind screen & fissures
& couldn’t imagine the movement of breath
without this man's fingers to guide it?
life is not worth the light it daily spills
unless he could feel him
unstoppable mountain & feverish
against him.
this is not to deride the power of friendship
despite the cliché
but why is it offered
as a way out against
the very real existence
of a man fucking a man
everyone’s already watching
two men grip each other in front of swarms
of eyes lie back in a ring
what’s one step further
what does a man contorted with grief
unable to bridge the length of his longing
to his beloved look like to you
to glance upward & see him through
the dapple five fingers make.

but it doesn’t matter
how others un-name them
try to rip the seams
threaded to their bodies.
everyone replays the scene
where they hold each other
in the center of an arena
two weeping loons breathless
against their lover’s neck
the type of relief that comes
only after tilted years of absence.

want is the balcony they leap off of
all for the brief moment for a fall
to become a closeness to God.

Ode to Mascareres

In the shape of a mask: light-handed mythmaker / thimble to brim with dreams of stars / your start was designed / by a shoemaker in León / Antonio Humberto Martínez / name scribed here to not / render forgotten in archive... (continues)

Moni Garcia is a queer Latine artist and poet from Illinois. They have been published in Poetry Online, Foglifter Journal, NOTHING HERE IS CORRECT AND IT IS DELICIOUS, a zine of writing and art in dedication to the CW television network, ALOCASIA Magazine, and elsewhere. They call on you to recommit yourself to the liberation of Palestinian people every day.