Stepmotherland

Darrel Alejandro Holnes

• Publisher: University of Notre Dame Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9780268202163, 9780268202156
• eBook ISBN: 9780268202149
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: American Poetry
• Index: Literature

Stepmotherland is a tour-de-force debut collection about coming of age, coming out, and coming to America.

Winner of the Andrés Montoya Poetry Prize, Stepmotherland, Darrel Alejandro Holnes's first full-length collection, is filled with poems that chronicle and question identity, family, and allegiance. This Central American love song is in constant motion as it takes us on a lyrical and sometimes narrative journey from Panamá to the USA and beyond. The driving force behind Holnes's work is a pursuit for a new home, and as he searches, he takes the reader on a wild ride through the most pressing political issues of our time and the most intimate and transformative personal experiences of his life. Exploring a complex range of emotions, this collection is a celebration of the discovery of America, the discovery of self, and the ways they may be one and the same.

Holnes's poems experiment with macaronic language, literary forms, and prosody. In their inventiveness, they create a new tradition that blurs the borders between poetry, visual art, and dramatic text. The new legacy he creates is one with significant reverence for the past, which informs a central desire of immigrants and native-born citizens alike: the desire for a better life. Stepmotherland documents an artist's evolution into manhood and heralds the arrival of a stunning new poetic voice.

The Down-Low Messiahs

In his hands I was a cup overflowing with thirst—

Finally, in New York City, eager to bless his

face during this heat wave, eager to be a fire hydrant

Holy Grail. Sweet deliverance, this was my death,

salivation from his sins, from his woman

(and the ways she too must love)

as I wish I had been from mine—

A bath of silky steam fogs up the mirror, see no evil.

Strong water pressure, hard rain, loud fall, hear no evil.

A small hotel room soap bar cleans off residue

left by his adhesive embrace of my lips

and washes my mouth out for speaking evil,

calling god’s name out in vain again and again—

And here I am, punishing myself for shining

the other light, here I am learning how to tell a lie.

But it’s too late—we’ve bitten too many fruits

and cannot relearn the old world.

Skins stretching and sweat quenching

fire-starting words—

The half-made mold of her on his arms

cracking slightly when we embrace.

The virgin on my medallion hits my chest

each time I kneel in front of him to

pray. My ring finger slides forbidden

down his thighs in communion with

flesh, its burn and concurrent healing.

Oh Lord, its reddening appetite—

Power Bottom

What can come from

perfumes of rotten fruit

every time you pull me

closer,push me harder,

scream my name. Tighter,

my reach pulls the rope.

Please, don’t stop. Bodies

ring in harmony with

the rope’s singing chord. I avoid

seeing ghosts by rolling my eyes

to the back of my head.

But even there I find them,

strange fruit, hanging from old oaks,

broken, bent, whipped, and bled.

So I reach to break the rope

Please stop. Don’t—

When it’s all too much to bear.

But instead my nails dig

into your back as I swivel and ride

pain, twisting into each lash.

There are too few of us to touch tonight

and though I see trees in your eyes

ordering me to call you Master, rope pulled

bruising my skin black,

you say this is love. Tighter. Tighter!

Light a match, catch afire.

Smoke rises.

A trail of tiny ashes; the hanging

scent of blood burnt leaves.

Vinyl

A scratched record from the thrift store serenades as

loneliness aways from our holy bones and hides

beneath the television set; its face has turned black.

Perhaps the TV set is off, and this turns us on. Perhaps

after the credits come the world’s oldest form of

entertainment: a feathered set of cuffs, a pair of

heels, and me piercing your nipple with a golden spear.

A spotlight lights us from the flashlight on your cell phone.

Yes, perhaps we are stars on camera.

Perhaps its pornography in the 70s.

Perhaps a love scene. Perhaps

cigarette smoke on the silver screen was sexy then, is sexy now.

Is nostalgia the tartest apple in our mouths?

Whisper your favorite lines from the song into the

camera moving side to side around the room:

I don’t know why . . . nobody told you . . . how to unfold . . . your love.

Romeo, burn me like the city in your name.

We are an empire in its final days. We are Icarus flying

too close to the sun. Phoenixes rise from

leather whips and unlinked chains.

Love is an addiction to poppers, PrEP, and shame

and temptation is tobacco ash

burning down the arch of your back when

a song we used to know by The Beatles

brings out the sweet blues in the pain.

I Always Promised I’d Never Do Drag

You liked me as straight as a man

in love with another could ever be,

and I did too. But you also loved

women, how their backs widen

where hips appear, how their...

Table of contents

• Title
• Copyrights
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• These Poems Stand on Indigenous Land
• Land Acknowledgment Statement
• Introduction to the Poems by John Murillo
• Foreigner
• Inmigrante
• Citizen
• Patriot
• Notes . . .