poetry
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Un Puño de Tierra
Acostumbrada está mi cuerpa de mujer a las muchas vejaciones, tantas ha sentido en cada uno de los días. Hoy amanecí en un tiradero. Mucho le pedí a él que la vida me dejara, tengo familia voy a la escuela me esperan en el trabajo, solo iba al cine y por un helado mis amigas…
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Prepping
where i’m from there’s a lake full of gold which is also a pond full of people & my pops my old man has taken to buying gold because it’s that or cryptocurrency that will be salvaged in the flood & people drowned in that pond men who never learned to swim striking out like…
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Abdication
At first I think of postage stamps and the faces of queens, immortalized in their black-and-white moment. The shades of the past are monochrome, marred only by some accidental fold, some streak of pale lightning. Pink roses blooming on the wallpaper of my bedside dresser. When I take this photo between my thumb and forefinger,…
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Colliery
At the MoMA there is a series of photos, black and white, Bernd and Hilla Becher who captured old steel mills, toppled tipples now destitute. My heart is a braitch hole, once full now excised of any valuables, cavernous drop through earth. Fingers pick me over, break away the slate from the good coal. Uniform…
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Make Your Visit
Evening signs a tremendous breath against the groaning weight of this city. Day away to rest, with its falling rays catching sliding on arms straining beneath rolled shirt sleeves, fishers back from dock leaning out windows butt-ends clenched between teeth, curling tobacco rosettes against flushed sky. Falling light dusts long heads of those impatient in…
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Mother of Pearl Rosary
My brother Herbert and sister Luisa laughing Sitting and swinging on a church gate A black robed priest, wearing a crucifix, swearing at them, to get down Confirmation day, white dresses Wearing a white carnations corsage my mother had given me No indication of oncoming storms on that sunny May day No indication of how…
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Crossing
A new tongue cuts through the canyon, where the dusty road dodges. The water dims with the red sun. We did not build the bridge, but our toes sparkled across it until we heard the creaks of someone else’s back. We did not build it, nor did we keep it from crumbling. Written by: Matt…
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Who Are These People and What are They Doing in My Living Room?
Your mother’s brother stands in the foyer, che this, che that accents of Argentina eja he says en vez de la ella de Mexicanos Tall and thinning, ruddy faced white beard groomed Su tía esta arreglando todo Couches, tables, chairs aligned in an oval lace covers crystal dusted and untouched The couple on the couch…
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Ode to the Olive Trees
Hardened after decades of adaptations deep rooted desert strains a tantalizing sun, scintillating leaves in air that steals your breath, ghosts Of children hidden to fight wild hamsin winds— Climb boughs, deflect the scratches made by rough bark, Fall over into toughened earth, catapult stones at the armed men waiting at the barbed-wire fence. Rows…
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Poetry Piece: “If My Vagina Could Speak”
If My Vagina could Speak She would tell me that she is the “mouth” of my heart. She would say I have fed her rotted filth masquerading as food, for longer than I want to admit. She might ask me, beg even, if I could sample my lovers first, if I could at the very…
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