Michael Fidel Marquez
You are the daughter of revolutionaries. Your mother sat waiting in a small hotel in Nicaragua, during the revolution. She had just come from a bar where she seduced a Somoza general. She stabbed him in the shower. You now live in America and there is little work for revolutionaries. You cannot go back to where you are from and be a revolutionary. Because all the revolutionaries where you are from are either poets or doctors. You are not a doctor. You are not a poet. There are whole days where you yell “Viva la raza” into the mirror. You practice wearing berets and military jackets. You create secret ways of sending information. Wearing two different earrings signals that something is wrong. You want to create a secret language but all the symbols you come up with just look like derivatives of the letters they are supposed to represent. You cannot make any sound with your mouth that sounds new.
Today you go to a meeting, a meeting where you might be able to revolt, to fulfill your destiny. But at this meeting there is only talk of protests and petitions and people aren’t wearing bandoliers or handkerchiefs. The name of their organization has neither liberation nor front in its name. You want to shout something about guns and blood but you don’t have a gun. Your mother once told you that nothing good in her country got done without a gun to someone’s head. You still don’t know what she means. You are wearing military garb and the woman sitting next to you says that she likes your look. But this isn’t a look. This is what you wear everyday.
Michael Fidel Marquez submits stories without bios. He’s mysterious like that.
