Counting Oranges
Every time Alma sucked in air through
clenched teeth, she wondered if the streets of New York smelled like the trees she and her father slept under every night.
Every time Alma sucked in air through
clenched teeth, she wondered if the streets of New York smelled like the trees she and her father slept under every night.
I will arrive in Laredo by stagecoach. & when I arrive, I’ll have to rent a horse because there’s no longer cars. Peak oil, come & gone.
For the first time in my life, I’ve returned my gaze to within the borders of Laredo. Artwork by Roger Alekzander Villanueva
At the primas slumber parties, we’d read Tiger Beat magazine and Linda would make up stories that involved meeting our magazine heartthrobs. We listened to 45’s on the record player and imagined being the Latino version of the Jackson 5 or the Osmond Brothers. Nandito and Boyer would plot and execute scaring us.
The entirety of this place, / this sky, rests in the cavern / of my mouth. I chew on it / listlessly.
People at the diner were looking around, wondering if the place ever perfected itself. Wondering if this is what it would be like at the end of their own lives. With the shelves soon to clear – there’s the assessment of how things used to be, the rushed importance of meaning.
The way you tell me
how you found me—inside glass,
under lights, surrounded
by other babies, mostly dark like me—
I sometimes feel like a stuffed toy
inside a claw machine.
I whisper apologies to trees, kiss gratitude into my bread, and press my palm onto stones as if looking to sync heartbeats.
A head
cannot live without the body. But a head can isolate itself from its
body. No, not simple mathematics, but how do I explain the mechanics of my body
any other way?
