A Grave is Given Supper

by Mike Soto

Overview

A Narco-Acid Western told in a series of interlinked poems, Soto’s striking debut collection follows the converging paths of two protagonists through El Sumidero, a fictional US/Mexico border town where an ongoing drug war is raging. The surreal verse of Soto’s poems portrays a bleak political climate as it coincides with the rituals of love & loss, culture & spirituality, & the quest for a better life at all costs. Following the narrative arc of Alejandro Jodorowsky’s classic cult film, El Topo, A Grave is Given Supper builds a world saturated with a mystical aura that describes the finite tensions & complicated desires of lives taking place in the borderland.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781646050109
Publisher:	Deep Vellum Publishing
Publication date:	07/28/2020
Pages:	144
Product dimensions:	8.00(w) x 5.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Mike Soto is a first generation Mexican American, raised in East Dallas and in a small town in Michoacán. He is the author of the chapbooks Beyond the Shadow’s Ink, and most recently Dallas Spleen (Deep Vellum). He received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, & was awarded the James Merrill Poetry Fellowship by Vermont Studio Center in 2019. A Grave Is Given Supper is his debut collection of poetry.

Table of Contents

Part I

Blank Chapel or, Consuelo's Mistake 3

Topito 9

Fue El Estado 10

Fog Having Tea with a Graveyard 12

Ampersand Kings 14

Breaking an Open Window 15

First Supper 21

Breve Historia 22

Topito's Fate 23

Consuelo's Vision 24

Death the Man Who Silvers the Desert at Night 26

Everyday Tunnels 31

The Dead Women 33

[Aluminum children run holding snakeskins up] 35

[When the firing squad lines up, honey] 36

Mercury Topaz 38

Laundry across Balconies or, Deciding to Fold 39

Topito's Yes 40

Part II

[Sixty-eight were found without heads] 45

[One moment, the vehicle] 47

[At the top of the Ferris wheel, the city] 48

[To say I love you put a bird on a wire] 49

[Looking to get Consuelo's name written] 50

Instructions or, Consuelo's Yes 51

[The first time I saw Death her dress] 57

[A dung beetle climbed out of the dead] 58

[Got out of the Datsun, found myself at] 59

Paloma Negra or, Topito's Mistake 60

Consuelo Gone 61

One Day a River Won't Stop Leaving My Mouth 65

[Let the rifle sleep & take the path] 67

The Wall Commonly Known as the Brow of God 69

Death the Man Always in the Pink Corner Store Buying Nothing 71

Consuelo's Promise 77

Missing (Consuelo's List) 79

The Next Life 81

Hourglass with Bat Wings 83

Part III

[The sadness of a fully dressed man walking] 89

Consuelo's Shawl 91

The Invention or, Consuelo's Explanation of the Third Eye 92

Dressing up a Drug Lord 93

Paloma Negra 99

Square inside a Circle 100

Death the Greedy Politician 102

The Useful Rituals 105

Untitled (Tunnel with Horse & Rider) 107

Topito's Poise 113

Consuelo in the Poppy Fields 115

A Few Visions (Topito's List) 116

Malverde Chapel or, Consuelo's Revenge 118

Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs 123

Death the Coppersmith 127

Acknowledgments 129

Editorial Reviews

The landscape in A Grave is Given a Supper recalls the tones of Frank Stanford, steeped with our phantasmagoric Texan borderlands. Soto offers up each poem like a votive candle, wreath of roses, or weapon, to lay on the altar of the outlaw Jesus Malverde, announcing the arrival of a new literary voice.” —Fernando A. Flores, author of Pig Latin and Stuck on a Razor

“Soto describes insects, femicide and the border wall in mystical terms.” —Jaime Dunaway, Advocate Mag

“A surreal exploration of the Mexican drug war written in free verse… While many poems traverse…dreamlike terrain, they’re also sometimes grounded in reality. This is where the book is most gripping and provocative.” —Tim Diovanni, Dallas Morning News

 

On Dallas Spleen and previous work:

“Soto drives a relentless narrative from poem to poem… a narrative composed of equal parts joy and rage.” —The Literary Review

“Soto eases into discomfort and renders it stunning.” —Katy Dycus, The Wild Detectives

“There is a deep, inescapable sadness in many of Mike Soto’s poems but it is a sadness for the world and never himself. It’s wrong to stereotype poets, even positively, but I think Soto’s Mexican literary heritage is deep in his bone marrow. It’s a rich, earthly, mystical tradition in which to have one’s taproots. These poems of light and life are compressed, but never crushed.” —Thomas Lux

"Feeling distant, far from family and the place that has given me the deepest sense of home, I resolved to write about individuals on a journey of self-actualization despite living in such a climate of violence, but I wanted to take that further—there were already enough portrayals of economic empowerment and ego empowerment—and make it a quest for a kind of enlightenment." —Mike Soto on his work in A Grave is Given SupperLit Hub's

“Combines neoclassicism’s equal temperament, the incisive excesses of the metaphysical poets, and Jamie Sabines-like political sensibilities.”—Joe Milazzo, ENTROPY

From the Publisher