BIO
Born and raised in Ciudad Juárez, México, with a B.S. in Biology and a B.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Texas at El Paso, Alessandra Narvaez-Varela is currently a Creative Writing instructor and a candidate in the Bilingual MFA Creative Writing program at the University of Texas at El Paso. This is her first publication.
Lord
If the lord of
the house is green, she is red
at the hips,
because unhinging from the bone,
the house with
an unmarried sister and baby,
a mother who
could tell by their walk
if sex had
opened their blessed seam, meant,
not scandal, but
surrender to all things—gut
lungs, instinct.
If the lord of the house is green,
she is the blue
of the flame: the man lifted
the blouse with
a lace collar up to her belly,
and found, in
the flesh asterisk "a perfect well"
where tongues
fit, even if pennies that fall here
do not grant
wishes: teenager lips, the selectivity
of a fly when it
comes to food or shit. If the lord
of the house is
green, she has always been verde,
because
"verde que te quiero verde," she only did
when she
loved a man until he was green or
saw jalapeños,
tomatillos and peas as love-
worthy. But no
matter, she is now a La Quinta
or Super 8
heiress—her back finds an nth degree
of bending, and
that odd small toe unfurls
when the high
finally comes, when she is lord-
less or lordful.
Maybe the lord of the house
is too mighty
and too busy to stain hearts,
sheets with any
color, or maybe, he is no one.