Requiem 
by Xochi Cartland 

                    for Jesus Ociel Baena and Dorian Herrera

In Aguascalientes, the lovers lie in the living room. One holds 
the razor like a ring, the other is held by the razor like a rosary. 

It has only been a few hours, the news has not yet risen louder 
than the ranchera spilling from balconies and open doorways. Still, 

cobwebs clot the wound. My grandmother always said spiders 
could bless a house, but the houses of their bodies collapsed. 

The police call it a crime of passion. We do not believe them, 
the magic men whose favorite trick is to make us disappear. 

Every time they spit the word maricón, a boy surrenders 
to the life he was sentenced as a hand-me-down humiliation. 

Still, we are here, some of us standing, all of us bruised. Beneath 
our feet, Mexico unfurls like a field of forgotten marigolds. 

(A planted love–deep enough to bring back the dead.)


Zapata, Belén. “Mexico’s First Openly Non-Binary Magistrate and Prominent LGBTQ Activist Found Dead.” CNN, Cable News Network, 14 Nov. 2023.

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xochi quetzali cartland is a queer & latina poet, seamstress, and transformative justice practitioner. She graduated from Brown University with a BA in Literary Arts & has since moved back home to Washington, DC, where they are rekindling their love of trees & learning to make pretzels. Her work has appeared or is forthcoming in Apple in the Dark, Common Ground Review, Half Magic, Illuminations Literary Magazine, Impossible Archetype, Little Patuxent Review, manywor(l)ds, & Oyez Review, as well as supported with fellowships from National Arts Strategies & Brooklyn Poets. Find more of their work on ig @y.las.maravillas