Que Linda La Brisa
They gather, ten of them, sit and laugh like women at a tea. They talk of men (the men they’ve had, the men they want, the men they’ve loved, the men they’ve cast aside: Me queria. Me queria amarranda. Me queria en la cocina. Ni que fuera mi mama. They talk of clothes, and make-up and shoes (and sometimes whisper things about eachother). They talk police, and talk arrests, and talk of rape. They talk assaults. They talk of clients who bruise, who hit, who bite. They talk of rights. And then they talk of earrings bought on sale. Some look like men. Some look like boys. Some look like girls. Some look like women, old before their time.
–The Word “Transvestite” Will Not Appear In This Poem, Verse II. A Leisure Afternoon, by Benjamin Alire Sáenz
Smoking Mirrors
Verse C
I destroy your ideas
Your view of the world,
Of the way things should be.
At night, in my world
Blue becomes black
Red becomes yellow
Man is woman
light and dark blurs,
moon is the sun, night is the day
When I come out.
I let go of the rope
And you fall, fall into
The entrails of my life
And with my gentle, caressing hands
I crush your view of the world.
–By Jimmy Santiago Baca
Exhibitions
Peola Simondi Gallery
Turin, Italy
January 16 – February 28, 2002
Part 2 – Gender, Race, Identity
Rhona Hoffman Gallery
Chicago, IL
October 28 – December 23, 2016
Whitney Museum of American Art
New York, NY
March 23 – June 4, 2000
Curated by Michael Auping, Valerie Cassel, Hugh M. Davies, Jane Farver, Andrea Miller-Keller, and Lawrence R. Rinder