Watching the Rio Grande Crest at Father McNaboe Park | Alejandra Martinez
The muddied streets and occasional puddles dampening our Vans. / We arrived and watched, silence curling up between us.
The muddied streets and occasional puddles dampening our Vans. / We arrived and watched, silence curling up between us.
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.
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?
The stench of God is everywhere, in the water, on the walls,
in the air.
