DOMINIQUE SALAS
Posthumanism and Dating Site Profiles
My future is daisycrowned in front of me, tempting
me with its synthetic crinkle. It was made for me, you know; but with the words out of my mouth, I remember I want stable heterarchy, which means that the inclination of specialness in my crown is null & void, essentially symbolic enforcement of capitalism. I add Figure out how to be a Snowflake in a Material World to my to-do list. I try to cheer myself up, but my brother, my company, is a violent-news buff, which is just regular-news that is virally trafficked, and therefore, ends up announced by dudes on their reputable YouTube channels. When women are on the YouTube news, the dudes report on every slimy orifice and innard except for their brain. I tell sweet parents at my work that my favorite children are like theirs. Quiet. But, I went to college so I know that children’s screeches seem like they’d make for a better backdrop of the future: an endless barrage, decades full of military-grade explosions and restrained weeping in romantic comedies looping and glitching. Blessed, any future presents vibrant to me-- multiple rings of fire, but isn’t the predictability of a scenario, whatever it might be, the deciding factor in whether or not to be anxious over the content itself? Really, I have all the evidence I need to prove this point in the way I say, Oh that’s horrible finger-cramp flicking a bright responsive screen with news accelerating. I’m scrolling on Twitter and growing rabid, striding away from a slot in nature or the nonhuman. I swallow up a belief in latent spontaneity of nature. Hand-on-heart pledging toward erecting steel or iron no longer earth, so then, no longer alive. Willing to cog into savage fantasy is the new sexy. |
Parceled Faces
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When a white girl in Las Cruces asked me "Where is your sombrero?" Someone chose to make 'I' a 'Them' face, a fraction of a vague whole. When I moved to Austin, I talked to real white kids, and they told me they could hear the El Paso in my voice. And I grew to mirror that technique: spying a privileged undercurrent beneath their fluorescent faces. Opposite 'Them' are 'Us': 'Us' are all wholesome Americana and sweet ubiquity in the media and in a gas station in 10-gallon Hat, TX, where I felt a cold cuff circle my wrist and a red dot diaphanous on the back of my head, searching for chips. Shuffling around slowly I hear, "Ye gonna buy that, honey?" and read eyes so confident she must have had a mob backing her. My face is slingshot away into parcels. My face is part of my father’s when the Fort Hancock cashier, acne-pocked, in a Churches Chicken would not take his order while he ran from El Paso to Austin; my face is there, says the intellectual, on a poster about browness murdered in Juarez; in each manhunt for the frijolero purse-snatcher suspect; in every indio despues que se vuelven alcoholicos; in the niche porn, choking-on-dick-while-mouthing-papi and puking; in the hoard of men that are whistling across the street; on a shadowy figure last seen doing a drug deal by Walgreens.
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DOMINIQUE SALAS was born and raised in El Paso, Texas. She holds an MFA from New Mexico State University and is currently a PhD candidate in Latin American Studies at Tulane University. Her work has either recently appeared or is forthcoming in The Volta, Huizache, Bone Bouquet, riverSedge, Dirty Chai, and Cutbank's 'All Accounts and Mixture’ feature.
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