Thrown in the Throat

Benjamin Garcia

• Publisher: Milkweed Editions
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781571319999
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

"An unabashed celebration of complexity in queerness and gender, an arresting snapshot of survival and a triumphant reclamation of language." — Shelf Awareness (starred review) "Tongues make mistakes / and mistakes / make languages." And Benjamin Garcia makes a stunning debut with Thrown in the Throat. In a sex-positive incantation that retextures what it is to write a queer life amidst troubled times, Garcia writes boldly of citizenship, family, and Adam Rippon's butt. Detailing a childhood spent undocumented, one speaker recalls nights when "because we cannot sleep / we dream with open eyes." Garcia delves with both English and Spanish into how one survives a country's long love affair with anti-immigrant cruelty. Rendering a family working to the very end to hold each other, he writes the kind of family you both survive and survive with. With language that arrives equal parts regal and raucous, Thrown in the Throat shines brilliant with sweat and an iridescent voice. "Sometimes even a diamond was once alive" writes Garcia in a collection that National Poetry Series judge Kazim Ali says "has deadly superpowers." And indeed these poems arrive to our hands through touch-me-nots and the slight cruelty of mothers, through closets both real and metaphorical. These are poems complex, unabashed, and needed as survival. Garcia's debut is nothing less than exactly the ode our history and present and our future call for: brash and unmistakably alive. "Angry, tender, and resounding with the speech of flowers, birds, and diamonds, every syllable carries a glorious charge." — The Boston Globe, "Best Books of 2020" "Electrifying... explores unrepentant sexual desire, interrogates fraught familial relationships, and examines our troubled cultural moment." — Lambda Literary

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Grateful acknowledgements to the editors of the journals where these poems first appeared:

85 South Journal // “Mourning Dove”

AGNI // “Ode to Adam Rippon’s Butt”

American Poetry Review // “Ode to the Pitcher Plant,” “This Way to the Egress” (as “The Egress”), “The Language in Question” [He has a mouth on him.], “The Language in Question” [When I called you a beluga whale,] and “The Language in Question” [Defying gravity after all]

Boston Review // “Ode to the Corpse Flower”

Crazyhorse // “Self-Portrait as a Man-Made Diamond”

Foglifter // “Mutual Monogamy”

Four Way Review // “A Toast to the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorra”

Four Way Review // “Reasons for Abolishing Ice” (as “Reasons for Distrusting Ice”)

Gulf Coast // “A Father’s Portrait in Styrofoam”

Ithaca Lit // “Queso de patas” (as “La Güera”)

Kenyon Review // “The Great Glass Closet,” “Warrior Song,” and “Le daría mis pulmones”

Lambda Literary // “Conversations with My Father”

The Missouri Review // “Anti-Ode to the Man-O-War” and “Keeping Home”

New England Review // “Ode to the Peacock”

Newfound // “To the Unborn Sibling”

Nimrod International // “Gay Epithalamium”

Palette Poetry // “Huitlacoche”

[PANK] // “On the Slight Cruelty of Mothers”

Plume // “Nonmonogamy”

Poet Lore // “The Memory Jar”

Poets.org (Poem-a-Day) // “Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese”

Prairie Schooner // “Heroin with an E”

Puerto del Sol // “The Language in Question” [The language in question is criminal]

RHINO // “The Darkest Lashes”

Tinderbox Poetry Journal // “Eye of the Hurricane” and “Silver City, New Mexico” West Branch Wired // “Heart Conceit”

Thank you to the editors of the following venues that gave these poems another home:

200 New Mexico Poems // “The Memory Jar”

BreakBeat Poets Vol. 4: LatiNEXT // “The Language in Question” [The language in question is criminal] and “Ode to the Peacock”

Best New Poets 2016 // “Le daría mis pulmones”

Best New Poets 2018 // “Ode to the Corpse Flower”

Foglifter (blog) // “Huitlacoche”

Los hijos de Whitman // “A Father’s Portrait in Styrofoam” (as “Retrato de padre en poliestireno”)

The Slowdown // “Bliss Point of What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese”

Verse Daily // “Heroin with an E”

Thank you: Kazim Ali, for your faith, courage, and generosity.

Thank you: to the remarkable folks at Milkweed Editions (with special thanks to Lee Oglesby and Daniel Slager).

Thank you: all of the folks involved in the National Poetry Series, for this opportunity.

Thank you: Sally Wen Mao, Eduardo C. Corral, and Danez Smith, for lending me your kind words.

Thank you: Benjamín García (not me, the artist featured on the cover), for gracing my book with your work, and Mary Austin Speaker, for bringing it all together.

Thank you: all of the hardworking folks at the following institutions that provided me space, guidance, funding, community, and other forms of support I hope to one day pay forward:

CantoMundo, The Frost Place, Lambda Literary, The Palm Beach Poetry Festival, Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference, Taos Sumer Writer’s Conference, The National Latino Writer’s Conference, the National Hispanic Cultural Center, the University of New Mexico, and Cornell University.

Thank you: Trillium Health for allowing me to learn so much about myself by teaching others. Without these experiences, this book would not be possible. Thank you especially: Dr. Valenti, Michael Lecker, Kristen MacKay, Julie Ritzler, and Emily Smith.

Thank you to all of my MFA instructors: Alice Fulton, for your keen eyes. Lyrae Van Clief-Stefanon, for showing me how to “eat the fish and spit out the bones.” Kenneth McLane, for your unwavering encouragement. Stephanie Vaughn and Helena María Viramontes, thank you for being such strong advocates for your students.

Thank you for your support: Maudelle Driskell, Patrick Donnelly, Gabrielle Calvocoressi, Joy Harjo, Amy Beeder, Valerie Martínez, Jack Trujillo, Ross Gay, Yona Harvey, Martha Collins, Martín Espada, Diane Thiel, Martha Rhodes, Edward Hirsch, Rigoberto González, Javier Zamora, and Natalie Scenters-Zapico.

Thank you: Dana Levin, for being a force of good. For believing in me when I couldn’t.

Thank you: Mrs. Price, Stephanie Hobbs, Yvette Hines, Michael Pérez, and James Raines for fanning a small fire. And to you, Brenda Huerta, Lynda Le, Lisa Marie Ramírez, for standing with me.

Thank you to my community of writers: Tacey Atsitty, Elizabeth Lindsey Rogers, Tanaya Winder, Joy Priest, Justin Jannise, and ___________________ (for the name I have surely forgotten). All my love to the Ironclad Medusa Collective: Mandy Gutmann-Gonzalez, Liza Flum, and Emily Oliver. A special thank you to the folks who put up with my annoying excitement at a new draft, often my first readers: Alex Chertok, Christopher Phelps, Suzanne Richardson, and Casandra Lopez.

Thank you: to all the women, queer, Latinx, trans, black, marginalized writers whose voices have guided me to mine, and whose work has made mine possible.

Thank you: to all of my family, chosen and not. Thank you especially to Mario, for always watching out for me. Thank you Miguel, for surviving with me. Thank you to my dad, for trying. Thank you to Jorge, Ernesto, Chantel, Marlene, Darlene, Perfecto. Thank you, Uncle Andy, for always encouraging us to create. Thank you, Bessettes, for being so welcoming.

Thank you: Nana, for your strength/wisdom/love. For randomly saying to an eleven-year-old boy, “Ricky Martin is gay and that’s okay.”

Thank you: Nick, for adding music to my life.

Amá: gracias por todo, qué suerte la mía.

Thrown in the Throat is dedicated to anyone who has lived in a closet. It sucks. I’m sorry. I’m here, in this book, with you.

And you, reader, thank you for opening this book.

Lynda Le photography

BENJAMIN GARCIA was a 2019 Lambda Literary Fellow, the 2017 Latinx Scholar at the Frost Place, and a 2018 CantoMundo Fellow at the Palm Beach Poetry Festival. His work has appeared in American Poetry Review, Best New Poets 2018, Crazyhorse, Kenyon Review, the Missouri Review, and New England Review. Garcia received his MFA from Cornell University and currently works as a sexual health and harm reduction educator in the Finger Lakes region of New York.

Founded as a nonprofit organization in 1980, Milkweed Editions is an independent publisher. Our mission is to identify, nurture and publish transformative literature, and build an engaged community around it.

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Interior design by Mary Austin Speaker

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Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• The Language in Question
• Warrior Song
• Averting the Gaze
• On the Slight Cruelty of Mothers
• Eye of the Hurricane
• Ode to the Corpse Flower
• The Language in Question
• Heroin with an E
• Le daría mis pulmones
• To the Unborn Sibling
• Reasons for Abolishing Ice
• Mourning Dove
• A Father’s Portrait in Styrofoam
• Conversations with My Father // A Poem in Closet Verse
• Ode to the Peacock
• This Way to the Egress
• The Darkest Lashes
• The Memory Jar
• Queso de patas
• The Language in Question
• The Great Glass Closet
• A Toast to the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah
• Ode to the Pitcher Plant
• Mutual Monogamy
• Nonmonogamy
• Bliss Point or What Can Best Be Achieved by Cheese
• Anti-Ode to the Man-of-War
• Birds of Illegal Trade
• Silver City, New Mexico
• Self-Portrait as a Man-Made Diamond
• Heart Conceit
• Gay Epithalamium
• Huitlacoche
• Ode to the Touch-Me-Not
• The Language in Question
• Keeping Home
• Ode to Adam Rippon’s Butt
• Acknowledgments