Poetry: migraineurs by Mae Ramirez
Mae Ramirez is a talent to watch—her “migraineurs” reaches into your scalp and pulls out a new name for god with each handful of hair.
migraineurs
momma pulls my hair so hard
i can hear the world in misty shards
maybe i lingered on the sun too long
maybe i’m an hija ingrata maybe i taste the burning
flesh of scalp, my sister’s ethereal woodsmoke
mixed with mold floral dishsoap human shit
we’re late to school but the all-day throb
means we’re pretty our ponytails are sleek tight
so long we could hang from them
miles and years removed and my head’s still
reeling i start to glimmer kaleido-light
gift of aura psychic bite of vision
in the scintillating rainbow i believe
this neuro-horrorology more than anything
and i’m a vagabond a necia a puta a daughter
so i’ve seen a lot my terra-cotta tongue is a heavy
crematorium i’m muttering to the meatcutter
about my sister again vomiting whalebones again
just another one of my tantrums
writhing beautifully in the bed
because my ungrateful head told me to
everything is biblical apparition
god tugs the blood vessels in my brain
and she’s so angry she pulls harder
Mae Ramirez
Mae Ramirez is a Chicanx poet and mother originally from Los Angeles. She holds an MFA from California State University Long Beach and is currently working on her first full-length manuscript, Moonward Delirium. She has been awarded the Writing Salon Scholarship, the Gerald Locklin Writing Prize, and was a finalist in the 2018 Not a Cult Press Poetry competition. In 2020 she was named a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award recipient. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Frontier Poetry, The Acentos Review, and American Mustard. She resides in Berkeley, CA.
