Poetry

After your father gets lost for the third time,
      you get angry because he won’t answer his phone.
Part of me wants him to stay lost. God, what has stolen my generosity? 

I dreamed of it again, my dad’s body lost to us again but finally 
found again, we set him in Dickinson’s coffin, wooden, painted 
white, where had his body been all these years, things felt strange, 

I count gulls until they spasm
into numbers, until I grasp
a number never uttered.

At night in the field, I felt the curvature of a palpable
time around me, felt the dark
foam of the waveform rise and collapse

It is easier for people to think I wanted
a dick swinging between my legs.

It makes more sense that way instead of the
facial hair that came at the same time

The summer after, a storm
split the sky over Hergla and I wanted to be in it.

Every day there’s the bay, every day, every night, once, it was Estero de Jaltepec:

Christmas, flew home packaged like a gift. Beneath my jeans a childlike padding. Came to adore the wee god, his dolorous mother.

it’s procedure to inspect 
the ass of an immigrant kid

undress put this gown on
the doctor will be here soon

Hidden in a dim stall as the muezzin called
all worshipers to prayer, I touched privately
the indelible stain.