From the greased-up engines of auto body shops to the innumerable points of light striking the dance floor of a queer nightclub, Auto/Body, winner of the Ernest Sandeen Prize in Poetry, connects the vulnerability of the narrating queer body to the language of auto mechanics to reveal their shared decadence. From odes to drag, to pushing back on the tyranny of patriarchy, to loving too hard and too queer, to growing up working-class in a time of incessant border violence and incarceration, this collection combusts with blood and fuel. Vértiz writes to dissolve a colonial engine and reconstruct a new vessel with its remains.
I Take—and Keep—My Flesh
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I think my friend is in love
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His candy shell Falcon, a ‘65
Is red retro—an old romantic
My, that hurts
The Beatles grip a rage, glowing
in my throat—a lighthouse in the daytime
My friend is used to handsome alleys
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I am a passenger, my leather
a crashing view
Silent streets remember
Lap belt marks on my thighs
And while I am
not my mother, I am
her skin
I am this door
Its candy apple stripe and so much steal
**
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A dashboard burns anything
It wants you to think
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This friend’s car
is my ride home
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We are gelled-down
and pat friends
I fall out his door
Thanks, I say into my brushed denim
**
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My skirt curls away from the
freeway sun. Jaws clutched
**
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Talk to me
Talk because
a chain-linked high
is hard on the knees
**
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And though he’s used to ignitions
I burn. We are
friends and gasoline
Should my driver four my body
and make me half, tell Amá he
crooned me, this racer, his ride
I’m sitting in
**
**
The Falcon is parking
his claws careful and far from my tips
He leans into my hot looks and where
he’s darker, a pimple once picked
Drunk-out in love
This lap is alive —backed into the seats, I take
and keep
my flesh