BIO
Rodolfo Avelar is a student and poet based in Fresno, CA. He is currently pursuing a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and a Minor in Creative Writing at Fresno State where he is an Editorial Intern at The Normal School magazine. When he isn’t focused on schoolwork or writing, he can be found playing video games, watching too much TV, or eating grapes.
Twitter: @brujeau
La Diva de la Banda is Dead
On Univision, they show images of the wreck.
Pieces of debris litter a forest somewhere in Mexico
between Monterrey and Toluca. Fuselage broken
apart in pieces. A California ID with her face on it lays among
indistinguishable hunks of metal. Fuscia fabric is strewn across
the dirt, embroidered flowers still intact. Still vibrant. Still there.
She wore that dress last night, in Monterrey, my mom says.
They say the plane nose dived into the forest.
They say it happened fast. There is talk of conspiracy.
My mom clings to it the way my sister and I used
to hold her hand. Tight. Like it was the only thing
left to hold on to. There is no way a plane crash
could bring her down, she said to us. But we all
knew it did. We left her alone.
I wish I could remember if my mom made dinner that night.
Hating cooking and loving Jenni’s music are the closest
she’s come to feminism. When she’d fight with my dad,
it was always about cooking. She’d blast Jenni, fancy herself
a bad bitch and sing along, Busquenle hasta que se encuentren,
los ovarios que me cargo! I need to know if we made her
get off the couch and do something she hated that night.
If she was flipping tortillas and poking her head out of the kitchen,
trying to get a look at the footage of embroidered flowers laying in a forest.