
Andy Sanchez
January 2023

Andres (Andy) Sanchez is a queer/trans Mexican poet, advocate, and traveler. He migrated to the U.S. at the age of 5 and grew up in Southern California and Las Vegas, NV. Andrés has been featured in over a dozen open-mics in the LA area and has hosted workshops, talks, and readings for diverse communities.Their first collection of poems, This Body was picked up for publication by World Stage Press and it was released on December 16, 2020. This Body remains on the popular list on the World Stage Press website. Andres is currently a poetry teacher for the Community Literature Initiative.
GUILT TRIGGERED
As early as my heartbeat in her womb.
I learned to survive despite
my mother’s madness.
She jokes about dying.
talks about her death
as if I'd just accept it.
Move on like the days unphased.
She lives in her own pain
that she cannot see my own.
I worry about how we will
pay for the funeral because
there is No inheritance.
No trust fund.
No savings.
We always lived paycheck to paycheck.
Now my mother is living
disability check to disability check.
I worry because I am the oldest.
She made me a parent too.
A responsible adult.
I scraped my palms reaching for financial stability.
Working two jobs while going to school full-time.
Survived being financially abused.
I wiped the blood off my knees
from falls seeking maternal love
that worked odd hours.
More and more hours.
I picked the scabs from my elbows
when I’d crawl back home,
knowing it would never again be home.
I know for a fact that my siblings
will not know what to do.
How to pick out a casket.
How to choose what clothes she will wear.
Which photos will be on display for the viewing.
How we will tell everyone.
Who we will not tell.
Where we would get flowers.
Who would open up their home
for condolences, prayers, and black coffee.
This will be a somber day
for my mother has done away
with most of her friendships
Has cut off her sisters-
Parents gone.
I don't know anything about funerals either
but I've always known how
to get out of hard situations.
I’ve done it all of my life
even when no one was looking.
Part of me wishes
I would just go first
so that at least they'd take
care for me for a change.
My mother has made sure
I am the only one that will
accompany her all the way to the grave.
She has insured to guilt trip me into
knowing what her last wishes will be.
It is how she has held me for years.
Her mental health has made it worse.
I still take the the phone calls
not knowing how she will find a new way to trigger me.
Not knowing how she will find another way
to weaken the foundation I learned to lay out for myself.
I haven't learned to re-parent myself completely
so I am left flailing- Gasping for air.
My mother still lives in her own pain
that she doesn't recognize mine.
She pretends that I will not care if she dies
but I learned to live through all of the pain
she absorbed before I was even thought.
​
​
#niunamenos
Inspired by an article in Center for Strategic and International Studies
Ya se olvidaron de nosotros.
Ya cerraron los archivos
con nuestros cuerpos mutilados.
Ya borraron nuestros nombres.
2019 was the deadliest for Mexican women.
They weren’t dying in masses elsewhere
other than in their own bloodthirsty soil.
3500 bodies and counting.
From Juarez to the southern border
there is the smell of flesh that has
disappeared in between the stench
of corruption and filthy fingerprints
of putrid men.
40% of them knew their killer,
These were not shadows in the dark
that decided today they would
Strangle
Drown
Suffocate
Stab
Unknown victims.
77% temen por sus vidas
Algunas
Madres
Todas
Hijas
Muchas
Hermanas
Mayoria
Amigas
Varias
Novias
They leave home
no guarantee of their return.
Their names painted into walls
in memoriam of who they were
and who they couldn’t become.
+
Cindy +
Ana Luz +
Citlali
+
Blanca
93% systemic impunity rates
There is never a killer found
investigated or charged.
These women are
Discarded
Unnamed
Unclassified
Unfound
Bound
to the walls of their homes
If they wish to survive.
What is survival
If the murderer
is the one that knows
their names?
+
Lucero Areli +
Marcelina
+
Lorena +
Bianca +
Sandra
Women rise up to the establishment
Hold government offices hostage.
They carry red paint on their hands
Signs of the bloody handprints
that later get found in
Dumpsters Streets Alleyways
​
Mutilated Unclothed Skinned Tortured
No form of suffering is ruled out.
No age limit. No body type.
No eye shape or color.
They are one in the same.
+
Carmen +
+ Paola
Angelica +
+ Maria Elena
Elisa +
Josefina
+
Martha +
Lesly
No government leadership
valiant enough to stop this hatred
as if these men had forgotten
they were birthed by women.
Ya se olvidaron de nosotros.
Ya cerraron los archivos
con nuestros cuerpos mutilados.
Ya borraron nuestros nombres.