Art Ticker

Dimitri Reyes

Cuco

who or what takes out the trash / for he
consumes neglect in three course meals /

children kidnapped in garbage
bags / totem pole’d around this city /

what is their crying but
the color of his face / living

inside everybody who left
what used to be home / in his

swagger, the absence of
graciousness / bones in the mouth

of a stray / neglected scraps
of Crown Fried Chicken / time

is only measured in snow / shooting
up bad behavior like crystalline

needles / liquid heat to fibered tissue / muscle
made metal in heat / clipped to hips

at intersections / parents bark his name to
progeny / attempting to keep darkness

out of a child’s face / because
darkness is his area code / he is

the unzipping of jeans / money
bands / the sounds of snapping

twigs inside a firearm’s
chamber / he is real

every time another
is lost to these

streets / he is real
because children.

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan poet, educator, organizer, and YouTuber from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and a finalist for the 2017 Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri received his MFA from Rutgers University- Newark and his poetry is published in Entropy, Obsidian, Acentos, Anomaly, Kweli, and others. You can find him expanding the poetry community at http://youtube.com/c/dimitrireyespoet.

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