Surrender
“In the red brick room, my father cries. / His cries are small, lonely animals. / I carry them with me / like an inheritance.”
Contest Winner
Aullo
“Yo vi las mejores mentes de mi generación destrozadas por remesa madness. / Starving. 10 cent. Maruchán. Limón y Valentina slurpin’ paisas”
THERE’S A RATTLE, SOMETIMES
“A strange earth / for this staggered colony of desperate valiant specks. There is / no there, here.”
I’m not one of those who left my land
“And then if not my death then my life will be fashioned like orchids / pouring from the windows, all of my friends catching me in nets.”
In Response to My Mother When She Says Hearing Me Read My Writing’s like Hearing God
“God // cannot be remission, the clear scan, a bell’s clang after my / last treatment.”
Huitlacoche
“Unhusk me if you must, call me / acquired, call me dirty, call me corn smut.”
Feral and Conjoined
By Nicole Homer
“They got in the car. All of them: the whore, the john, and me, staring at my knees. We were feral and conjoined from then.”
Hapnophobia or the Fear of Being Touched
“There is a word for the fear of water, but not of drowning. Another / for the fear of darkness, but not how it hides a person’s face.”
west harlem, july 2017
“black is everywhere but here it’s not a matter as much as it is a holy question”