“Jesus Loves You” (The 10 Steps of Catholic Recovery)

Miyin Delgado Karl

I am foreign land under

these checkered skirts.

It is not my mission to explore,

but to conquer and scorch,

while drawing my eyes upwards

and away from my growing breasts.

Rosary beads, bloody knees —

mass is another class

I memorize to pass.

I miss it sometimes.

Nostalgia blears

the sting of the whip.

Tell me my heart is made of glass

and that if I stand still or jump

it can either be filled

with light or hellish smoke.

Make me bow and keep me there,

force me to memorize the cracks

of the floor, grow lone with boredom

so I yearn for someone to break the silence —

Him.

I am always writing in the second-person.

Command me, give me a sign, heal me,

give me, grant me, take away from me.

Answer me. Love me.

I own nothing, not even my thoughts.

It is all, I am all,

Yours.

Every Sunday for a year my grandmother makes me go with her to Monserrate — my very

presence an offering, my body a lamb on the altar of someone else’s want. This high up, the

mountains are all neblina and lack. My chest feels concave. I cannot draw a single breath.

“Los homosexuales no se pueden casar,

no son un lugar estable para construir un hogar,

no son padres ejemplares para un niño o niña que quiera triunfar.

Lo único que hacen es fornicar.

Arrepentirse es lo único que los puede salvar.”

The Pope dies.

A hundred men take his place.

The teachers, the priest, the headmaster

at our all-girls school celebrate.

We wonder where we fit in.

Deep down we understand:

we are the cushion on the kneeler,

the wine in the eucharist.

“PRELAPSARIAN”

I am told by a professor that every story is about a loss of innocence and the longing

to recover it. But I don’t dream of Eden, I don’t yearn for return. I dream of flushed skin, wet

lips, salt-water, tulips. A crucifix that does not drip with blood.

the hobbyist missionary at the coffeeshop tells me god still loves me,

that i am a lost sheep in need, waiting to be shepherded back

towards his all-loving arms.

he says godly love is like nothing i have ever experienced,

but he doesn’t know i found religion in Your sheets,

that every poem i have written has been about You for years,

that i have tasted heaven on the crook of Your elbow and found it worthy of worship.

i fall in love

and start caring less about being loved and more about loving.

i start wanting to love god

the way i love You —

not because i need him

or believe myself indebted to him

or scared without him

but because i want him.

my love is not pure. my love is one long craving, one short strike of light

against the dying night.

It is all i have; i hold it tight.

When the time is right,

i build a pillow fort around my love and lay Your life next to mine.

i want You, my love, tonight.

i have never tasted god’s skin and doubt i ever will

— that’s the problem, isn’t it? —

but Yours

is soft as sin.

I crouch down to get a closer

look at the bed of sorrels,

as big and round as my hand.

Heart-shaped, they grow large

in the shade that the forest provides,

the redwoods above — their temple.

I cast my eyes

above.

If god is anything at all,

he is a tree.

This is the only higher,

ancient, mysterious,

being for whom I will kneel.

There are ways to feel small without reproach,

there is spectacle without sacrilege,

humility without humiliation.

The woods baptize me

with their devout darkness.

There are worse fates than a godless life.

I am, for better or worse,

a woman

no longer a girl —

catholic

good

eager

to please

to resurrect

what I didn’t kill

If there’s a spirit within me

it’s not holy,

it’s earthly and greedy and hungry

I need not read between the lines,

learn chants and chapters and rhymes,

break my heart open for a holy exam,

justify who holds my hand,

or tally my actions

as wicked or good

to deserve to be alive

I speak in the second person less these days

10.

Lesbian bars and queer coffeeshops

are churches for my newfound shape,

and this strange woman’s words

become my favorite verse:

I never speak to her again,

but I briefly wonder if god

sent her to me as a sign,

if she is a rainbow or a dove or both.

The woman tells me she is getting married.

She looks happy.

I ask her about her wife.

Her only reply —

Love should be easy

and it is.

INTERVIEW WITH THE AUTHOR

(1) What diasporas do you write into, and what diasporas do you write to create?

As a Latina and an immigrant, I write as a part of a wider Latin American diaspora and tradition, specifically a Colombian one. Moreover, being part Korean and Panamanian as well as proudly queer, I am constantly at odds with the reductive and unimaginative narrative Latinos abroad have been assigned—one of monolithic proportions that, through classism and racism, deliberately obscures the rich history, infinite diversity, and complex experiences of those who were lucky enough to have been born in Latin America, or come from families who were. It is my project to, through my writing, actively create a more expansive and compassionate understanding of the Latino diaspora that includes and centers queer and mixed-race Latines.

(2) Where does this piece land within the greater history, body, and/or evolution of your work?

I wrote an earlier, longer version of this poem last year when I was working on a short chapbook about my relationship with faith, queerness, and growing up Catholic, a collection which, when I finished, I felt wasn’t honest or challenging enough for what I needed to exorcise. This was meant to be the final piece of the chapbook, summarizing what I had learned about myself, but instead it now feels like a beginning: of my growing interest in nature and eco-writing, of experimenting with form, and of larger questions about my own spirituality. “Jesus Loves You” lives in the intersection between my Colombian childhood and my “Western” adulthood, between my Latinidad and my queerness, while at the same time pointing at a greater quest—of language and meaning, artistic style and existential pursuit—that I am embarking on through my current writing projects.

(3) How do "xenolithic edges” show up in your piece?

I think I always write within xenolithic edges, calling attention to the heteronormative Western world that has absorbed me through my own reluctance to assimilate, through the history and heritage that my body, my very existence, represents. Everything in this poem exists and blurs that border: the imposition of Spanish within an English-language poem, the negotiation of a faith that was forced upon me but that still lives within me, the awkward convergence of my queerness and my Latinidad as I was growing up, less like two currents flowing to the sea and more like lava crawling down a previously-solid hill, destabilizing and melting everything in its path. In “Jesus Loves You”, I am both the foreign body and the larger, solid rock.

MIYIN DELGADO KARL IS A QUEER COLOMBIAN WRITER AND POET CURRENTLY BASED IN SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. SHE WAS BORN AND RAISED IN BOGOTÁ WITHIN AN ASIAN-LATINO FAMILY THAT NOURISHED HER WITH STORIES. AS A RESULT, HER WORK CENTERS AROUND THEMES OF IMMIGRATION, QUEERNESS, RELIGION, AND LATIN AMERICAN FOLKLORE. HER WRITING HAS BEEN PUBLISHED BY WILDSCAPE. LITERARY JOURNAL, SANTA RABIA POETRY, LATINELIT, HEYYOUNGWRITER, AND VARIOUS ANTHOLOGIES. SHE IS ALSO THE CO-HOST OF THE PODCAST "THE GIFTED CHILD SYMPOSIUM”, A SLOW READER OF BOOKS, AND A BUDDING TREE ENTHUSIAST.

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