The 'process notes' pieces were originally solicited by Maw Shein Win as addendum to her teaching particular poems and poetry collections for various workshops and classes. This poem and process note by MK Chavez was part of her curriculum for her Poetry Workshop at University of San Francisco in their MFA Program for Fall semester of 2022.
Process Note or
666 Considerations on Horror began
as fragmented thoughts on the meaning of watching over 500 horror films during
the first year of the COVID pandemic. Eventually, Blueprint for Mysterious
Creatures was born, it is a hybrid poetic exploration of identity.
Process Note or 666 Considerations on Horror
This
creature emerged as a fragment.
In
this story horror inspired and permeated
the
corporeal and the intangible
parts
of self.
One
night, I found Frankenstein
& knew I loved him, I was him.
The
desire to speak the unsayable
to
ruminate on the unthinkable.
In
the nightmare, I opened amaranthine
door
after door. I wanted the answer.
This
book is the sacred realization, I am.
The
landscape of horror films
is
fashioned from the details of lost identities.
In
El Salvador, I’m Black but Black in that
we
don’t have black people in El Salvador way.
Joan
Didion's book Salvador
was
a slasher film. It said, here’s one way to see yourself.
I
shut my eyes as one does
during
the scary parts of a horror film
and
closed the book. There was blood everywhere.
My
friend says, I never feel Latina enough, says
but at least you speak Spanish.
My
other friend says I knew it when I tell her
that
I recently learned that my father’s side of the family is Black.
My
other friend says, but you’re not really Black.
Father
never said we are Black.
He
said try not to look Black.
Frankenstein
is not the name of the monster
the
monster has no name.
Frankenstein
is the name of the father.
Note
to self:
What
would happen
if
I brought bring friend to Father.
I
watch horror to make sense.
So
that I might love my monster, love your monster
love
my father’s monster, love the monsters
that
my friends carry
even
love that monster, Joan Didion.
American anxieties find a good home in cellulose.
Becoming
numb is body horror
and
an integral part of the pantheon.
What
I know is that when all is lost
I
find my body in horror. Some stories
lurk,
lurch, and levitate. Stay with you
like
a hungry ghost
that
lives in the back of your throat
like
an eyeball.
Horror
is an allegory.
A
not-so-secret secret
and
fabulist at heart.
Join
me in the labyrinth
but
you should know
if
you build a labyrinth from the inside
out
you may never find your way.
Horror
has a penchant for mimicry
&
repetition.
Recurring
themes include desecrated
burial
grounds, infrasound
that
pairs with the spongy
tissue
of marrow. The company
of
the haunted, cherry-colored lip-gloss
a
certain coming of age
trope,
dioramas of wounds,
the
best fears, the tender view
of
teeth. All that is swallowed.
Horror gives trauma an alternate ending.
Studies say we don’t go to horror
to
see violence, we go to see
the
unraveling of rage.
In
The Thing, there is one woman identified character.
Her
name is cheating bitch.
Cheating
bitch is a voice
that
beats a man at chess.
The
2011 remake includes women.
In
an Atlantic a man says
there is something lost when you include women.
Wrath
is a meditation
Horror
is a wish.
Consider
the monogamy of some monsters
their
single focus and the promiscuity
of
others altering everything
they
touch.
My
father would drink and ask
why are you so dark?
Monsters
once lived on the edges of maps
&
minds. Eventually, everything is explored.
The
word monster is derived from the Latin
monere
meaning to warn.
Art
historian Asa Mittman says
Monsters do a great deal of cultural work,
but they don’t do it very nicely.
Somewhere
inside me
lives
a wish to incite fear.
Deep
in the swamp land, sunk in silt
slithering
among Cypress & Tupelo,
seeped
in brackish water
among
Spanish moss & Shoebills
lives
the forgotten creature from the Black Lagoon.
A good horror film shows us who we are.
What
if we are the monstrous thing?
What
if we are the rescue group
that
shows up at dawn and shoots
the
survivor of the long night?
What
if we are every character?
What
if every film carries a truth?
Even the worst of them.
Dear
Reader,
this
book is an invitation.
Sample poem:
Diegesis of the Bear in Midsommar
The practice of crawling in and out of the bear skin.
The way in which grandmother begged
Don’t get a
tattoo,
your
dark skin is already working against you.
The
year the bear made friends with the man
who
owned the corner store.
He
liked to say,
I like the color of your skin.
The
bear found reasons to visit the store
cigarettes
for father.
Jolly
Rancher candies
to
stain the tongue
and
occasional milk.
It
was the first time
the
bear’s color
was
not a warning
or
resentment.
The
iris opens and opens.
The
bear is fictional space.
The world of Midsommar is an ellipsis…
Here, in this whiteness, my blackness is pure macula.
Bear alight in my eye.
MK Chavez is a mixed-race
Afro-Latinx writer and educator. She is the author of Mothermorphosis, and Dear Animal (Nomadic Press), and the lyric essay chapbook A Brief History of the Selfie. Chavez curates the reading series
Lyrics & Dirges and is co-director of the Berkeley Poetry Festival. She is a
recipient of the Alameda County Arts Leadership Award, the PEN Oakland
Josephine Miles Award, and the 2021 San Francisco Foundation/Nomadic Press
literary award. Her most recent publications can be found in the Academy of
Poets Poem-A-Day series and at Golden Gate Park in San Francisco with the Voice
of Trees projects. She teaches writing and is a book coach through Ouroboros
Writing Lab.
