Monique Quintana
Monique Quintana
Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been published in Pank, Wildness, Lost Balloon, Okay Donkey, and The Acentos Review, among others. Her work has also been supported by Yaddo, The Sundress Academy for the Arts, The Community of Writers, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She was the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Writer of Color Fellowship and is a contributing editor at Luna Luna Magazine, where she writes book reviews, artist interviews, and personal essays. You can find her at moniquequintana.com.
That's Still My Stone Serpent
Before knowing what winter choke could taste like, I ate from the food lab on a cowboy road. And I cured a glass altar boy, who sent confessions the same month he conceived his wife's child, and my egg grew slow in my palm like a stain, like a meal. I packed my bags through church bells and a stucco façade tourist trap. Recalling the day my mother got a restraining order from her parents and draped all my dresses in her brown Oldsmobile. My brother played the Legend of Zelda in our new apartment and ate strawberries and warm rice until mid-morning. I thought I should cry but couldn't find the care. I could hear the hatchling snare over phone wires, a bright exit home. A boat to my lily perfume sample forgotten in my coat jacket pocket and an Avon lipstick bullet. Red-brown is like a cheap cake wine birthday gift. No pass to the white Bengal tiger that clawed to the carpet and my white leather boots. No dice to the blue lawn and weeds that carried our ancestors to the meeting place, where they joined our hands in cuffs of rain and cursed us.
Monique Quintana
Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019). Her work has been published in Pank, Wildness, Lost Balloon, Okay Donkey, and The Acentos Review, among others. Her work has also been supported by Yaddo, The Sundress Academy for the Arts, The Community of Writers, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. She was the inaugural winner of Amplify’s Writer of Color Fellowship and is a contributing editor at Luna Luna Magazine, where she writes book reviews, artist interviews, and personal essays. You can find her at moniquequintana.com.
That's Still My Stone Serpent
Before knowing what winter choke could taste like, I ate from the food lab on a cowboy road. And I cured a glass altar boy, who sent confessions the same month he conceived his wife's child, and my egg grew slow in my palm like a stain, like a meal. I packed my bags through church bells and a stucco façade tourist trap. Recalling the day my mother got a restraining order from her parents and draped all my dresses in her brown Oldsmobile. My brother played the Legend of Zelda in our new apartment and ate strawberries and warm rice until mid-morning. I thought I should cry but couldn't find the care. I could hear the hatchling snare over phone wires, a bright exit home. A boat to my lily perfume sample forgotten in my coat jacket pocket and an Avon lipstick bullet. Red-brown is like a cheap cake wine birthday gift. No pass to the white Bengal tiger that clawed to the carpet and my white leather boots. No dice to the blue lawn and weeds that carried our ancestors to the meeting place, where they joined our hands in cuffs of rain and cursed us.