The music venues that were spared have opened their doors again. I dial the number of a friend to arrange to meet at the hall at the end of the boardwalk. There’s a concert later: four acts, each renowned. It’s important to arrive there early to avoid the crowds, though I might be overthinking the whole thing. As of this date, the death toll has surpassed one million, and most people aren’t that willing to take the risk. It’s safer to catch a stream. A woman picks up, and I leave a message with her. It’s loud, and the connection is poor. She speaks with a foreign accent. People are driving mechanized vehicles on the wood or composite wood. No one has any respect anymore. Nonsense.…
Juan was determined to get it right, but by the looks of things, he wasn’t doing a very good job of that. He was lying in the bed of a woman who wasn’t his wife, trying to figure out how he’d allowed himself to end up in this position again after promising himself that he would give up this lifestyle. The girl he’d just slept with was in the bathroom cleaning up, and Juan took this as a prime opportunity to escape before he was forced to look at her again, which he didn’t want to do, because instead of seeing her face he’d see his wife and his two daughters staring back at him and making him feel lower than a mongrel. Lower than a rat, even.…
The stars are pretty. I guess. “Sundown” by Gordon Lightfoot is lovely. I suppose. I’m sitting here on top of Dad’s car, looking up at the stars, on the side of a street that passes my old high school on a cold September night. I look up in the skies and wonder if Jair can see me. I wonder if he’s smiling at me, or if he’s concerned that I stole Dad’s car to come out here while having an emotional crisis. Jair Cruz was my brother. Ever since he was eight years old, this cop had come to school to tell us the importance of listening to our parents and not joining gangs. Jair wanted to be a cop. After much training and patience, he graduated from the police academy back in 2016.…
Back then, the seller told me that it’s made of a buffalo’s horn, (didn’t I know then that it wasn’t a cool idea?) and would last a hundred years or more (though I didn’t get the connection). Its base came off in five months, and I had to fix it on a block of wood. The two carved birds, with intricate details, eyelids and all, could have elevated it to a pure work of art but for their perch, a stunted tree branch that looks like a cross between an uninspiring schistose structure and concrete. I still like to look at the birds when I wake up, to reflect on their gaze upwards, as if they’re looking eternally at a taller tree branch, or for some rain that falls slanted in the dry wind to rekindle a horn that’s not dead yet in their core, breathing a glow to those eyes
Author’s Note: My poems are inspired by the sensory and emotional experiences of individuals who negotiate the political and ideological spaces they live in.…
Take the plunge Head first into the rich lanolin Twenty gallon bags of many wools, waiting
The three day workshop: A roomful of women and fleece Spinning wheels set, a teacher from New Zealand
To craft woolen and worsted Short draft, long draft, twists to Crimp and staple— The wool cards are plied, combs straightened and The ditz comes to play— Cute as a button in horn, center holed for the finishing top— As fiber is spun on hypnotic wheels Mingled talk and laughter
We plunge, hands first into the skeins of warm water Pull out strands of wet yarn Into the outdoors, draped O’s on the bushes A calligraphy of branch to weave
