‘the monsters my parents warned me about speak in their defense’
— Joyce Chong
mis hijos. i am sorry. every face looks like yours.
This three part poem speaks in the voice of several creatures and beings prominent in Mexican American folklore and beautifully reverses their roles as myth and cautionary stories to tell your children. And it’s not just the voice and the lore, Aguilar’s use of language and space encompasses each character, from the hidden, lurking paranoia of el coco, to the direct, clipped stanzas of chupacabra, then the ethereally haunting voice of la llorona.
This extension of the existence of childhood monsters and myths moves invention beyond its initial purpose, to make children behave, to keep them safe from the unknown. To teach them that there are things that should be feared in the world. But beyond that, this poem seeks a perspective shift, to teach not caution, but empathy. To entertain the mirror and to look beyond the surface, beyond the fear, of our stories.
i want to
tend to a thing, watch it grow,
& hear it say
i love you back.