I am unfair,
spooked out of a good life I say,
banking on success and not
the body of a soldier resting.
Salt is
dominance,
perforated on a whim.
I am no child.
That nipple,
in rattle
pursues the lead
I’m supposed to be grateful for this full life.
This stockpile to look at.
I’ve gotten sloppy.
Show me two guns and I’ll drop my defenses.
Throw masculinity at it
decide that I'm no longer thirsty.
Still want it;
proof that I’m losing
and can’t stop thinking about it
Published in No, Dear, 2025
If you look for gold and find it easily, it’s poor
No bird this green should be
Two miles out to sea
During whale season.
It landed on the net hanging
On the side of my boat.
There’s no fish there, I said
But it didn’t want fish
A bird like that doesn’t eat fish
Just stones perhaps and maybe
Fruit. A humpback rocked the ship
But I was scared, too scared to pull
It in from the wings. Those things are
So endangered that if it dies and I touched
It then I lose everything. Come here you stupid
Bird, be reasonable. I got kids at home that gotta eat.
We finally put bricks down on the house, it’s not just
A shack, it’s a proper jungle up fisherman’s house. If I get
Caught fishing with whales and drowning macaws I’m done for.
It still wouldn’t come up, but it did make a sound that sounded like
Fuck you, I’m god, I choose what we both have. In the distance two whales
Jumped, and I could see a big wave coming towards us. The jungle looked particularly
Pacific from these dark waters, and the macaw glowed like a green angel against my rusting
Side. We braced for impact, I did touch it, its heart rate slow and abandoned. Are you dying?
I asked it. It flipped its huge wings like an umbrella, wrapping the net around its feet. Good way
to go, friend, and I sat there on the edge of the boat with my hands out on it. The whales mated
all around, in a chorus.
To Space, the Idiot
I fucked a guy who wanted me to write a poem about him:
You don’t just say I love you when I’m inside you because it’s big. It’s huge
And simply not the answer. You don’t remind me
That the moment is perfect because it’s never
The same twice unless you’re asking for a rhyme
Scheme. A metaphor. A break:
You don’t ask someone to break you without a line in mind
Or a hand on your jaw that could have it snap off.
You hate me I said, you hate me! And he knew
He got his poem.
Published in Drome Magazine, 2024
Yolanda
Here I am taught a few elemental properties on immigrating to Spain:
1. Men never take you there on purpose.
October 3rd, 1995 is a nativity scene I understand not much of. My first time at the center- a house in Cali's belly that kicks a mother- and it kicks hard, it kicks like a womb asking to tear open on a cloud. The mother shouts through the patio to the second floor: Yo -big breath here- Lan -the eyes shut closed- Da!
The upstairs window ceases a small smoke line. Moments after a big pale woman shows up at the front door. The mother cries,
The woman gets a taxi. This is your life-
It's hell-
I don't think you'll ever breathe as well as now
The shout here was louder than you'd imagine, birth seemed near inside the yellow cab yet to suppose it'd happen there is foolish considering the mother's reserved nature-
Then a series of arching narratives occur:
My parents move out of sweet Yolly's house,
I grow a voice, Yolly raises a child, my father welcomes his children to the US, Yolly's husband dies, no one waits for her in Madrid so she moves there and I never really get to meet her
Until now when she tells me my own birth story and I can't stomach these old bones
2. Men like phone calls.
Hey baby
I know you play house
This way okay, what do
You want from it
Why don't you grab
My waist, say it, with
Both hands
Grab
And I'll take it, how do
I sound when I moan
In your ear now baby
Does it comfort you
The way my tits sound
Round this way okay,
Let tongues-kiss
Because you like the way
I sound Latina don't you,
Don't you, it's not racist
When you invest on it
This way okay
You like these tits you
Hear, they baffle you
With hip size and my
Lonely 19 years
Don't you wait for me
Forever, don't you know
My neck can sense the
Dog breath coming from
The other line this way
Okay, it pays the bills,
In half an hour I'm
Coming over just
Place your finger on
The goddamn phone
And eat it
3. Men don't know you're lying until the call reaches the operator.
Here we get to all the business stuff. Finances, connections, suits and button downs, all that. No time for egg cooking or house cleaning or those other disparities. Money booms in this house, it grows, the government doesn't sweep in as expected. We adopt some children from our family, we make friends who adopt us. Somehow this is a better life, we buy a house in the homeland, all the cigarettes smoked go unnoticed, there's this consistent silence, this gift. It takes so few people to be this cared for, I think we're all happy, I think and think and it does nothing for anyone but us. At ParqueSur we find bundled tampons, look at ourselves in the mirror and buy those spaghetti tops in the white-woman XL. Certainly we cry when we feel like it.