Poetry:
Poems have been a significant part of my life to express myself. I have been published in my school’s Literature Magazine, the EPS AQUILA, for both my Spanish and English poems. Recently, I submitted Meridian: A Retelling to several poetry forums for consideration for publication in The American Poetry Review. You can sample a few of my poems in my book here and a recent poem below!
Where did he come from?
I sense I have earned Tobin's trust.
God is present, if not in me.
The irony, I decide, is that God too has a sense of humor.
A scalphunter seeking bounty over life
And yet the most pious of us all.
He senses my question
And tells me that the Judge was first found in the desert
By none other than Glanton and his gang.
An orchestrated move, no doubt
Yet even the devilish Judge wouldn't have known where I'd gone
For I'm the wretch even God cannot follow
Unless the Judge was Satan himself.
They were all pursued by Indians, Tobin says
And had run out of powder for their guns.
Another Comanche could have happened
But in came the Judge and his pistols,
That saved their lives.
Gold and silver,
That bought their respect.
And a rifle titled
Et In Arcadia Ego.
Even in paradise, I exist.
The deputy Brown wanted to the leave the Judge
The only good decision he would have made
Had Glanton not overruled him
Glimmering treasure in his eyes.
Long lost now-brothers who lust over ore
Got along instantly
To Tobin's disgust.
The Judge's needs had long been met
And he saved the gang, again
Telling them they needed to steer away
From the mountains, which they did
With their impressionable leader.
What great evil lies there, we said, that the Judge knew?
I suspect he wanted to keep the gang alive
Until he lay me in my desert grave.
Indians are resilient, they do not let by
And they were catching up
Yet the Judge was cheerful
Acting like a young child
A godly creature of saccharine nobility
That wins all cretins' hearts.
The Judge took the gang to a cave of bats
Like some sorceress, decked in sage and gnats
And looked for the nitre, found in bat guano
That is of great importance in gunpowder.
A one man machine of violence
Turned a gang into dependency.
The astute ones deserted,
Choosing death, skinning, and hanging by Indians
Over any more with the Judge.
The Judge and his compatriot the Delaware set up a kiln
To burn the tears of the dead comrades
Into charcoal
And from its rise, ammunition.
Unforgiving wolves followed this pack
A truer, nobler army in comparison to ours
They smelled the blood in the water from miles away
And not that of the Indians or the killers we had become.
The gang reached the malpais, unforgiving and volcanic
Where - besides the Judge - all seemed to panic
But the Judge read a satanic verse
And delivered his first
Sermon, that the Earth provides everything
To destroy all good.
The Judge then chipped at the malpais with his knife
A sign of what he would do to us,
One by one.
For their very souls, the gang aided the Judge to create
The foulest, blackest, mass
That would turn every approaching Indian
To a gun-ravaged carcass.
Tobin's tale ended
And I wondered what sat before us
Only inches away lay the man capable
Of murder so great
That he could be the Judge of none other than evil.
Though I inquire, who the Judge is and where he came from
Tobin quiets me.
The word of God is not one to be told.
For the Judge has ears like a fox.
I turn to the campfire, where the Judge
Tall, bald, pale, and horrifically child-like
Stares back at me
And smiles the way he first did.
I understand now
Who exactly, he is.
Et In Arcadia Ego.
Even in paradise, he exists.