Triptych by Monique Quintana
Santa Muerte and the Pocha Brigade
little white church
On a mountain, there stood a church that was attended by many children, with painted faces and pink cheeks like overturned abalone shells and their limbs were always splayed out, as if they were encased in glass that threatened to fall on the webs of their hands when the moon tipped over their bedside, and so every night, these children prayed and lit thick blue candles, but not in honor of their saints or stars, but in honor of the church itself, which was large and white built, and there were no stained glass windows for the children to trace their names on, but rather a book that they could record their transgressions on, but the book was for the children that sang out of tune during choir and the children that did not like the church, for they thought the church was a sham, and one day those children took their book and unstitched their wings so that their vertebrae felt like pearls in their hands, and they ran for the road that ran below the mountain in gapes that was lain with rose stems and knotted with roots and pulsing with dew.
copal
Your mother was a brown girl who found herself on a dirt road speckled with stems. The stems began to turn into princes. One by one, under stars, the princes asked her for her hand in marriage. Each prince had his own admirable quality. Each prince had black hair the color of tree bark and skin sewn and smoked from copal. For each man she was grateful. She saw that each had their own moon. To each she declined. She delighted in the thorn fall on her feet.
pocha
A girl was born at the end of a rosebud path, but there was no one to welcome her into her village. Her mother was frightened because her daughter was born with no voice box. Every day when the women in her village walked by, the mother took to saying hello for her. One night, a cup appeared on the daughter’s bedside, and she took the cup and drank from it, until her belly was full and she began to speak and her mother said, this is your blood star and song, and the cup made a deep red bloom in her throat, and still, every day, her mother had to remind her that the garden was there.
little white church
On a mountain, there stood a church that was attended by many children, with painted faces and pink cheeks like overturned abalone shells and their limbs were always splayed out, as if they were encased in glass that threatened to fall on the webs of their hands when the moon tipped over their bedside, and so every night, these children prayed and lit thick blue candles, but not in honor of their saints or stars, but in honor of the church itself, which was large and white built, and there were no stained glass windows for the children to trace their names on, but rather a book that they could record their transgressions on, but the book was for the children that sang out of tune during choir and the children that did not like the church, for they thought the church was a sham, and one day those children took their book and unstitched their wings so that their vertebrae felt like pearls in their hands, and they ran for the road that ran below the mountain in gapes that was lain with rose stems and knotted with roots and pulsing with dew.
copal
Your mother was a brown girl who found herself on a dirt road speckled with stems. The stems began to turn into princes. One by one, under stars, the princes asked her for her hand in marriage. Each prince had his own admirable quality. Each prince had black hair the color of tree bark and skin sewn and smoked from copal. For each man she was grateful. She saw that each had their own moon. To each she declined. She delighted in the thorn fall on her feet.
pocha
A girl was born at the end of a rosebud path, but there was no one to welcome her into her village. Her mother was frightened because her daughter was born with no voice box. Every day when the women in her village walked by, the mother took to saying hello for her. One night, a cup appeared on the daughter’s bedside, and she took the cup and drank from it, until her belly was full and she began to speak and her mother said, this is your blood star and song, and the cup made a deep red bloom in her throat, and still, every day, her mother had to remind her that the garden was there.
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Monique Quintana is a contributing writer at Clash Media and Senior Beauty Editor at Luna Luna Magazine. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing from CSU Fresno, and her work has appeared in Huizache, Bordersenses, and The Acentos Review, among other publications. She is a member of the Central Valley Women Writers Color Collective and blogs about literature at https://razorhousemagazine.com/
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