Midnight once he stood me
by the door of our refrigerator
open, like a wedge of cheese in darkness,
a milk glass in my hand,
he yelled, he cursed at me
why would I do something for my mother
and not for him, why damn it not
just take the goddamned pill,
swallow the leather seed of it dissolving
slow against my uvula, the hard
edging off to chalk and choke.
Mexico lindo y querido, muero lejos de ti, que digan que estoy
dormido, y que me traigan aqui.
—song by Jorge Negrete
Let the sky flip and shake …
1.
Sister Juanita buys cherry flavored
Lip gloss for the girls
Apple bubble gum for the boys
The lord’s prayer
Smells like a fruit stand
Under the summer sun
Across …
By throat is how we arrived
A cradle in voice
A passion & command
By hands is how we arrived
A touch
Skin rising, cringing,
Churning of a …
Very soon, and in pleasant company.
—Chinese fortune
In a race for a tree, one Mexican soccer player almost beat the rain,
only to be met at the …
I’m smacking around a piñata shaped like a palm tree. It is southern California, mid-summer. The palm tree piñata is swinging back-and-forth beneath the bright summer sun. It is my …
And maybe the feds did supply the hood with fireworks And maybe the fireworks will scare the gentrifiers away And maybe the gentrifiers will leave the hood And maybe I’m …
He came to me in a dream, wet as a newborn in his new skin. I readied him for a bowl of bitter world (the cathedral two blocks away from …
A man lives in an old house converted to apartments. There is still a servants’ staircase, but now it leads to a blank wall. And the walls are paper, the …
The house where turns are made, a brick two-story duplex. We lived upstairs. In the front yard, an oak with one low hanging branch where I’d swing by my arms …
