Poetry

I squeeze the snapdragons / as though it were childhood / and the smallest motion / of petal mandible / were a thousand words / for loving you / laid out on a blanket:

we be bouquets, be green, leaves / ethereal, be wildweeds, be lamb’s-quarter, be day / -flowers’ cool blue, be hue busting / up bleak blur.

What is this, my swelled-up chest wanting to burst at the Bee Gees “To Love Somebody” and at dropping my daughter off for her first day of daycare?   Doesn’t it see any difference?   What is this, my reeling brain letting all the weeps come forth and sucking relief into place, my wet face […]

I wish I would change

like seasons, like these unleaving

trees, even the pumpkins rotting

on porches.

On my seventh birthday, my tía took me to the   beauty salon to get an alisado. It’s time that you   got rid of that pelo malo, she winked like a full   moon stretching above the sky. Her friend Puchi stirred   a white creamy concoction and smeared it over my   scalp […]

Spring’s flora takes roll call of its colors: honeysuckle yellow, camellia pink, daffodil orange, hyacinth red, primrose purple, and magnolia white.   The earth quakes in this desert city of Odessa.   Curious how fissures in Mother Earth’s womb cause her to suddenly shake.     The tremors are like tumors,   2.5, 2.8, 3.2. Curious unlike […]

A man in a Chicano Batman shirt skated along the border. He was going back to the U.S. Instead of waiting in line, he ollied over the border wall. As he landed, he crossed himself.

Then he went to Alberto’s Tacos. He ordered a California Burrito. When he was in México that summer, he had enjoyed plenty of authentic meals, but now that he was back in the States, he craved a Pocho classic: the California Burrito. Carne asada, fries, pico de gallo, sour cream, and a bit of salsa. He was set. It was delicious. When he finished, he rode to the bus station and headed back to Southeast Los Angeles. It was the last day of winter.

As in the hard heart // of an avocado, the part we cut
around, // amputate, curse // when what’s left isn’t enough

to sate our hunger. As in that // beautiful roadside bouquet
bound to a guardrail // meant to celebrate loss, to warn us