Octavio Quintanilla
Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014), and teaches Literature and Creative Writing in the M.A./M.F.A. program at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, Texas. Connect on IG @writeroctavioquintanilla. More of Octavio's work can be found here: https://www.octavioquintanilla.com/publications.html
Corpse Fauna, Frontera
1 Here, a stove is luxury. An indoor toilet. A cup of clean water. 2 Elsewhere, black heart of the festering fruit. White grin of flies. Body hanging from a bridge. 3 Here, second hand shoes. Horse’s dry prepuce. 4 Elsewhere, dinner: fist of hair. 5 Elsewhere, head full of lice. Blow flies forcing the mouth to open.
Gift
For Christmas you give your father three hundred dollars to buy dentures. Toothless, he must now suck meat, juice it up with saliva, grind it with pinkish jaws till it’s ready for swallowing. He’ll go across the border, to Mexico, where it’s cheapest, but more dangerous. You tell him how young boys will follow him, begging to shine his shoes…. Read more →