Poet, mónica teresa ortiz, at Malvern Books, Austin, TX

mónica teresa ortiz reads from autobiography of a semiromantic anarchist

Malvern Books, Austin, TX (March 2019)

…so now we love in silence, and we pretend that there ain't a body buried between us. mónica teresa ortiz

In her book, autobiography of a semiromantic anarchist, mónica teresa ortiz digs up bones of ancestors and of Queerness and exposes these bare remains both past and present.

I can relate to the anxious feeling of fear ortiz mentioned (visiting home near the cemetery), and the feeling that death isn't just something for the end, but something lived with every day, where unmarked graves of violence, trauma, and Otherness litter the sidewalks. The act of writing their epitaphs together, of marking their headstones, gives us all rest from the tiresome daily grind these deaths burden us with. I am grateful to ortiz—for tending the garden of unmarked graves. She has inspired me to do the same.