2018

Never pick a fight with anyone
who still buys blank media in bulk.

Remember the bliss of auto-reverse, […]

Summer afternoons, we make a game
of collecting empty shells

spit from a shotgun chamber: silver […]

My mom tried to reclaim me in small ways like teaching me cumbia. When I was young she used to lean in after spinning me to say: el borracho will lean in too close, breathing his hot alcohol on your neck, that’s when you know it’s time to leave. […]

I remember how the school laughed, marveling
how a pretty white boy could take a beating
when a pair of sistas jumped him on 10th Ave […]

I learn that to want
there to be monsters

is perhaps monstrous itself […]

I am the living mother

            holding out for 24-hour grain of rice

swaddled before hemorrhage; 24-hour spent
[…]

Some things you never know until
an immigrant tells you, like how his ghost
means an owl in your language & […]