Poetry

to forgive me I masturbate 
then pray to God to forgive me 
I masturbate then hate myself 
after scrolling endlessly through 
porn I never find exactly what it is 
that I’m looking for because there is 
no category for my type of desire

Para Mamita Juana, Papita Pablo, y Padrino Reden

Alma lost an eye when her house collapsed under ash. 
Milo severed his thumb por una bomba. 
Juana married John in Las Vegas.
Ernesto washed dishes in Hollywood until his skin cracked 
while...

My mother is alive and funny
in the house above the marsh.

I think she does not miss my father much
as he is still alive, though elsewhere.

I’m without body but forming in the latticework 

of blood cell and fret. Each threat pulls me upward

tempting and building me until my spine lifts into a column,

I put a poem

in your backup jewelry box,

the one you keep

at the bottom of the taxes from 2003

in order to foil the inevitable burglars,

Up ahead it’s white. Snow animal,
I’m running at your back. I’ve failed to tell you
I’ve been hungry all this time, to tell you 

Everywhere I look I see him,
I have a right to fear for him, 

though I have no right to claim his color.
His blackness is his to own and what will

my mouth say of that sweetness.

1. Dad, Don’t Be That Guy

2. Dad, Quoting the Wikipedia Isn’t Gospel

3. Dad, I’m Going to Take Those Away

4. Dad, I Warned You

Flagged to a halt by a woman in boots
and an oiled canvas coat, we stopped for her

orange flag on the highway yesterday in
the first flurries of the season and watched

I’m docked at a lake that

the people don’t attend. 

Machete on my hip to 

make a devil cough up