First, to celebrate you, Bek Huston, I drew four cards from the Baraja del Destino, from our game Negocios Infernales.
You are the artist of these cards. Carlos and I are in constant awe of your rapidity, your cheerfulness, your thunderous talent, your ability to revise, and your glorious collaboration skills.
Without you, none of these cards would exist, and neither would the game as we know it.
Second, to celebrate you, Bek Huston–I adjure you, Tattooed People of the Midwest: make an appointment at her shop!
Third, to celebrate you, Bek Huston, I take these cards you helped us make, and I write you these four mini-poems:
Genius Prefers Effort Over Genius
in your veins run
dreams like spilt ink
strange constellations scratched
on the bruised back of the sky
sleeping, you smile
with the Mona Lisa serenity
of a world-weary Sun
knowing
how art can break
a body open
one needle at a time
Where Have You Gone, O My Skeleton?
remember when your treacherous left arm shattered? how you sat up, and spilled extravagant kaleidoscope oracles from your right?
Pain is the Opposite of Thought
for the woman who wields needles for the woman who works miracles for the woman who riddles the dermis with holes to flood our subsurface with color and codify our memories in flesh for this woman I wish a sanguine clarity an easing of anxiety a handshake between her shadow-self and the lamp of power that is her living body
The Soul Loves All. The Mind, But Some.
let she who has been shushed
hush the lips
of the loudest
let she who has been bound
embroider
her broken shackles
let she who has been erased
stitch her place
in the stars
the west wind our witness
the east wind our witness
the south wind our witness
the north wind our witness
