John James Audubon and

The Battle of San Jacinto

Monica Rico

 

There I was—
on the shelf
hair suspended
and smooth as
seaweed, the matching
jewel of each
eye and earlobe stretched
soft toward the chin,
a decoration of adornment
never recaptured. Lost,
captioned as missing.
My hands, plucked

like zucchini blossoms
and forever hidden from my head
afloat in formaldehyde—
a specimen labeled
Mexican female.
Glass jar beside
what books, the preserved
body of a burrowing owl
poised toward me, a sash
pistol stolen from Santa Anna after
he dipped his pen betwixt slain soldiers.
A rifle ball
from the occiput
polished bright
as a mirror,
an engagement
ring among the carefully
collected cicatrized skulls, fondled
for a century for indentations and bumps darkly numbered
classified, confirmation of whose civilization.

 
 

Monica Rico is a Mexican American CantoMundo Fellow, Macondista, and Hopwood Graduate Poetry Award winner who grew up in Saginaw, Mich. She holds an MFA from the University of Michigan’s HZWP and works for the Bear River Writers’ Conference. Her manuscript PINION is the winner of the 2021 Four Way Books Levis Prize in Poetry selected by Kaveh Akbar.