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A Grave is Given Supper
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.
- GenresPoetry
144 pages, Paperback
First published July 28, 2020
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55 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
June 3, 2021
It’s my first time reading anything like Mike Soto’s work. They way Soto weaves the dark, scary and often sad poetic words is lyrical.
The collection of poems shares the story of a Mexican man and woman, Topito & Consuelo, facing with death time after time as they dodge Narco traficantes and try escaping a fictional border town.
The frightening, immigrant journey of both had me gasping and wanting more! Although let’s not mistake my longing for more story as an unfinished or choppy book. Contrary � there are PLENTY of great lines here!
The poems are grounded in real life experiences & events of Mexico’s drug war. But it’s also a story about love and the dynamic between a couple as they are confronted with life threatening scenarios and traumatic events.
As I read I became obsessed with Consuelo’s turquoise shawl knitted by her abuelita or Topito’s black hat.
And let me not forget the illustrations! They remind me of Calaveras and Catrinas 💀 illustrated by Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada.
Lastly and most importantly, it was honor reading the work of a local, Dallas & first generation Mexican American. Thanks for sharing this piece of work. Can’t wait to read more.
The collection of poems shares the story of a Mexican man and woman, Topito & Consuelo, facing with death time after time as they dodge Narco traficantes and try escaping a fictional border town.
The frightening, immigrant journey of both had me gasping and wanting more! Although let’s not mistake my longing for more story as an unfinished or choppy book. Contrary � there are PLENTY of great lines here!
The poems are grounded in real life experiences & events of Mexico’s drug war. But it’s also a story about love and the dynamic between a couple as they are confronted with life threatening scenarios and traumatic events.
As I read I became obsessed with Consuelo’s turquoise shawl knitted by her abuelita or Topito’s black hat.
And let me not forget the illustrations! They remind me of Calaveras and Catrinas 💀 illustrated by Mexican cartoonist José Guadalupe Posada.
Lastly and most importantly, it was honor reading the work of a local, Dallas & first generation Mexican American. Thanks for sharing this piece of work. Can’t wait to read more.
August 3, 2020
I enjoyed reading Soto's debut book, which is space-oriented and filled with twists and turns. It's surreal in the historic sense of the word, follows lineages, presents scenes that erupt and fade in excitement. There's a lot here, and a lot more that one won't see.
March 7, 2024
This was a fine read. I liked the poetry well enough but the narrative was far too experimental for my liking.
I think the author bills this as a surrealist piece, and it was far too avant garde for me.
It’s unfortunate because I love a celebration of Hispanic Texan Litt.
I think the author bills this as a surrealist piece, and it was far too avant garde for me.
It’s unfortunate because I love a celebration of Hispanic Texan Litt.
April 14, 2023
I was sent this in a book subscription box I got from my old neighborhood bookstore in Houston during early pandemic. I had it on my nightstand this whole time and struggled with it because it kind of bills itself as a narrative novel but once I started approaching it as poetry I really enjoyed it more. Beautiful and interesting poetry with a narrative overarching theme that imo wasn't clear as day but that's why I like this more as poems vs poetic novel type thing.
April 27, 2021
This is almost a novel in verse. The poems are interconnected but not necessarily weaving a distinct plot. There’s a lot of musing about death and violence but it’s not necessarily grim. The style jumped around a bit so that some poems were easier to understand than others. I’ll probably need a second reading to grasp things more clearly.
December 20, 2022
To be honest still parsing through thoughts on this a bit. I was reminded a bit of Deaf Republic, maybe just in terms of genre/scope
I like that Soto seemed to have found his own space w/r/t diction/pacing: it's a very cohesive collection
Some poems that stood out:
-Topito's Fate
-Breve Historia
-Consuelo Gone
-The Wall Commonly Known as the Brow of Good
-The Invention or, Consuelo's Explanation of the Third Eye
-Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs
Some lines that stood out:
-"He imagines a life tormented by insight, the mirror's / edges sharp against his bowels, but the pain shrinks to / a mere discomfort, & after years he even grows creative / with the mirror, & learns to see a furniture of disharmony / thought to have no apparent form: a pendulum rigged / against its own gravity, a tennis match at the heart of a / labyrinth generating its own branches." - -The Invention or, Consuelo's Explanation of the Third Eye
-"If every star is a grave, I've held tunnels / against the windows of trains when they / mirror the face of me trying to look out" - Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs
-" anger became a house she / couldn't sleep in, hallways had the voice / of an absence going through them" - Breve Historia
-"The wind of that dream lasted a horizon / of years in my stomach, leaving a lone tree // bent in the gesture of listening" - Topito's Fate
-"in the wired space where clothes // mean to dry, a voice began but only its solitude / could be made out." - Laundry across Balconies or, Deciding to Fold
-"Consuelo seized // my wrist white, told me always in her dreams / an anguished dog yearns to be saved / from the argument it's having with its tail" - Part II
-"Once he left, leaves & laughter / came in, branches of sound came around me / like a forest, cicadas built a droning kingdom / with the random throats of toads" - Consuelo Gone
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I like that Soto seemed to have found his own space w/r/t diction/pacing: it's a very cohesive collection
Some poems that stood out:
-Topito's Fate
-Breve Historia
-Consuelo Gone
-The Wall Commonly Known as the Brow of Good
-The Invention or, Consuelo's Explanation of the Third Eye
-Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs
Some lines that stood out:
-"He imagines a life tormented by insight, the mirror's / edges sharp against his bowels, but the pain shrinks to / a mere discomfort, & after years he even grows creative / with the mirror, & learns to see a furniture of disharmony / thought to have no apparent form: a pendulum rigged / against its own gravity, a tennis match at the heart of a / labyrinth generating its own branches." - -The Invention or, Consuelo's Explanation of the Third Eye
-"If every star is a grave, I've held tunnels / against the windows of trains when they / mirror the face of me trying to look out" - Memento Mori in Three Exponential Ifs
-" anger became a house she / couldn't sleep in, hallways had the voice / of an absence going through them" - Breve Historia
-"The wind of that dream lasted a horizon / of years in my stomach, leaving a lone tree // bent in the gesture of listening" - Topito's Fate
-"in the wired space where clothes // mean to dry, a voice began but only its solitude / could be made out." - Laundry across Balconies or, Deciding to Fold
-"Consuelo seized // my wrist white, told me always in her dreams / an anguished dog yearns to be saved / from the argument it's having with its tail" - Part II
-"Once he left, leaves & laughter / came in, branches of sound came around me / like a forest, cicadas built a droning kingdom / with the random throats of toads" - Consuelo Gone
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September 26, 2024
A remarkable collection of poems, strung together over a worn strip of land that unites the two characters that trek across the verses towards each other. The writing is delightfully dark and twisted, peppered with moments of beauty and poignancy, and heavy with vivid imagery. Yet there were times where the writing is almost hieroglyphic, forcing you to read and reread to comprehend, and even then that narrative string was often lost for me. Ultimately though, that doesn’t matter. Each poem exists for itself and that longer story resurfaces when needed.
I loved the experience of reading this.
I loved the experience of reading this.
January 15, 2021
A set of poems that tells the story of Consuelo and Topito in a border town. There's drug violence, folk religion, tunnels and so on, as you might expect. I really enjoyed this and was gratified to learn at the end the author is local. Very cool.
October 6, 2022
Sick ass shit
August 27, 2020
An amazing collection--plenty of great lines and images. Several poems seem to be grounded in real life events from the drug war in Mexico, but this is mostly a fiction, a lyric narrative. I recognize many elements from El Topo and think they work well in the context of the borderland, but this is not a faithful re-telling of the film. Epic & dark is a good way to describe the tone, but it also reads like pulp fiction in a way. There is also a story within a story here between two characters who fall in love, one of the more surprising aspects of the book. I definitely have the urge to re-read.
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