Edwin Alanis Garcia
(After Frida Kahlo's Moises)
Call me simiente de Israel; my father,
this idea of Father, was a Hungarian Jew
who lived on both sides of a camera, proving
our faith enroots beyond evidence.
It's nothing blind and proselytizing—it's purely pragmatic,
nonveridical, organic, a truth indexed to the body's nucleus.
Past and present gestate in the world's
womb, float corpuscular and helpless.
This is my history, my connection to Aten or
Jehova or Coatlicue or whatever you call It.
Our story is the chosen three-eyed child,
Egyptian prince and bloodkin of Aaron
and Miriam and Marx and Yeshua and Venus,
Buddha and Stalin and Gandhi and Trotksy.
Pantheons of oblique stories, probably or
certainly lies, reminders
that our origins are so much
spilled paint.
Edwin Alanís-García is the author of the chapbook Galería (Ugly Duckling Presse, 2019). His poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in The Acentos Review, The Kenyon Review, and Tupelo Quarterly. He received an MFA in Creative Writing from New York University and is currently finishing an MTS in Philosophy of Religion at HDS.
Photo by Albin Millot