Category: Uncategorized

Her expertise
was pasta, “shells”
she made by-hand forming
dough over the joint
of her left thumb.
Last door in the hallway,
a sleeping porch,
was Jimmy’s bedroom
in the house
on Roosevelt Avenue.
Screened-windows
on two sides
left open on purpose
for any chance
of a breeze
on a Fresno night.
After her youngest boy
double-crossed her
& moved out,
She renovated the room
for food preparazione,
To do her baking.
Like all six of her sons,
he married a woman
who was not Italian.
She was consoled
when making pasta
on the bread-board,
like she used to do
in her mother’s cucina.
Sacks of plain flour
& semolina on the table
covered in cotton cloth,
a rolling pin, and spoons.
She crafted flat noodles
with a pasta-machine
brought from Italy.
Meatballs & marinara sauce
she made with fresh lamb
from the butcher shop,
& tomatoes from her garden.
Easter, she made cookies.
Dough-wrapped hard-boiled eggs,
with glaze & sprinkles.
Her Christmas cookies,
the same without the egg.
The only store-bought pasta
she would ever consider
spending money on
at Piemonte’s Grocery
were tiny stars.
Stars, made celestial
with the addition of butter,
she served in a bowl
for lunch on Saturdays.

a chainsaw was medical
before it was used for lumber,
widening and chewing through
a mother’s pelvis
in an effort to guide her
child out.

this was safer, somehow,
than a cesarean section,
which were rarely successful
before anesthesia and proper
hygiene and yet,
a century after the retirement
of the chainsaw and generations
of medical advances
they still
almost killed my mother.

my temples throb
and temperature rises thinking
of her returning
every day for a
week in searing pain,
hallucinating and
fainting in the lobby
after the smelling salts
roused her, they sent
her home.
my breath retreats
and shakes my spine thinking
of them
scraping
out infection, and the
sponge they left
inside her weeks ago
without time for anesthesia,
newborn Lilia
somehow sleeping peace

fully through her screams.
generations of medical
advances for moments
like this.

lilies were sent to her
room in pungent waves of ginger,
gold and white
sickening her
in a morphine haze.
they were moved but
she could still smell them
across the hall. lilies
are now forbidden
from entering the house.

My father is weak
from the pool,
from this disease that almost everyone
hasn’t heard of.
I.B.M.
I rub the towel
over the sides of each arm
left
and then
right.
I don’t ask
if he wants my help.
I silence his no
because water droplets turn
into slippery puddles.
into he slipped,
and then slipped away…
The air is hot enough to soak up the wetness,
but I keep blotting his skin.

I wish I had a bosom
I would not put my fishing lures there
Rather, money from a friend for dope or rent
folded like an origami chicken so it would poke and itch
not slide to my belly button
A stash for Belle Lettres, you know, notes from foreign
lovers signed in lipstick kisses

I would need cleavage like suspension bridges
holding things dry from places I’ve not yet been
I would name her, this place of nothing from nothing
more

Pilar, like Hemingway’s boat, a place of refuge
decorated in Christmas stockings, she would have
a temper, like seas trying to rid themselves of salt
and crustaceans

I would let Bob sleep here and cats purring like Bowie
when he was Ziggy stardust

This dress, Victorian, I find myself lanced in and its whalebone
corset cinched above and below hate and men

A bosom to be proud of on parade day
draped in rainbows coffins

We would drink coffee together on some tropical deck
Almost big enough for a kitten or a baby rabbit
to curl into
Something to always pet and pet and pet

My father stands in the hallway of
the house he still pays for
and begs me
to keep my dreams alive.
Callouses on his hands echo centuries
long-dead and smothered,
bloody aprons
railway spikes
dirt, soap, and disappearances.
He builds me
scaffolded on ice-cold overtime
slipped discs
refusing painkillers
for the sake of the suffering.
He offers me a pen and a history,
workers, mothers, swallowed by time and debt,
safe passage to wine-drunk libraries,
degrees in hubris and luxury
all the people who told us
dreams don’t pay unless you ask
nicely.
“Leave the subtlety
to the people
who pay to fix what is beneath them
and tell them
who you are.”
When I make it
and I will make it,
I’ll purchase him a good bed
my mother will rest in alone.

i have a box of nails in
the closet.
the box is tucked on
a shelf among the
bed sheets.
i take this box out
every couple of weeks.
only after
8pm.
that’s when i
give myself a
manicure.
i sit
in bed
with all
the lights off
and
i
glue.

I live in a house designed to accumulate filth,
A lint trap for my fathers depressive episodes that never gets emptied,
A house that seems suspicious when cleaned.
More of a circus performance than anything when it’s in its best state.
Something that I know is fleeting and a sweet lie, a dream, a fantasy.

I’ve always thought it better to be honest,
Or at least that’s what my father told me.
But at this point all of his lessons seemed burdensome,
Especially when accompanied by the bitter guilt that consumes me when I
remember our long talks.
Sometimes he was a bit too honest.
For as smart of a man as he was, he certainly liked to pretend he didn’t know what
he was doing.

But he liked to paint a picture.
He was always better, smarter, wiser than me,
And I always tried to fill his shadow.
I wanted nothing more than to be like him,
To paint my face white with a wide lipstick smile.
I loved him.
Overwhelming loved him.

Loved him so much it hurt.
Loved him so much that I hated the part of me that hated how much I loved him.
Loved him so much that it made it all the easier for him to use that against me,
For him to distance himself so he could always be better.
I’d go crying to him about feeling less than, insecure, worried that I’d never be half
the man he was.
He’d tell me that he’d hate to say that he was proud,
Because it seemed condescending, in a way.
But he said he was proud,
And loved to brag about the parenting that led me to where I am today.

Tears would flow down my face,
Fueled by the belief that I would never be able to properly acknowledge
everything he’s done.
By thinking he was the most caring person I had ever met,
The kindest,
The strongest.
He was my idol,
My role model,
My muse, in a way.
He could do no wrong in my eyes.
Which made it all the more difficult to justify the sinking feeling in my chest when
he would break that pedestal we both put him on.

He always told me “it’s best to be honest”.
Though honesty has its limits,
And honesty has its prices.

I was always afraid to be honest around him,
Because every moment I felt one step away from hours of lecture in response.
Him teaching the ‘principles of life’,
Giving me lessons.
Telling me about the horrors of his childhood,
And raising his voice about the terrors of today.
Reaching over boundaries to pull me closer, as if he could bridge the gap in maturity.

I was afraid to ask for anything,
Though he always assured me that I could.
But he never meant it.
And he proved that time and time again.

He always said I could rely on him,
Though I never could,
Which is spoken by the memories of hours waited for him to fulfill his promises.
The hours spent slouched with exhaustion and worry about homework,
As he spoke at me about the nuance of everything little thing I did wrong with my life.

The days spent with anxiety, and trepidation to go back,
Worrying if he was going to punish me for one thing or another.

Weeks spent, realizing that this was not how a father should be.
Weeks spent crushing my soul and everything I looked up to.
Weeks spent questioning what it really meant to be a good person,
Because it certainly wasn’t him.

The years spent waiting for lecture to stop,
For him to tell me I had learned enough.
Years spent watching his expectations change,
As I flip, cartwheel, and somersault in hopes of meeting them,
In hopes of preventing him yelling again,
Of him resenting me,
Of him leaving me.

And maybe I did learn something from you,
And maybe I did become a better person,
But it was learnt through lessons of gluing myself back together after you tore me
apart.

To my father, I hope that you don’t kill yourself like you said you would all those
years ago.
Here’s another work of prose for you.
You always said I would be a writer,

red skirt woven & beaded with sullen piety,
cleaved between two worlds along the breast,
& skin the color of skull.
when the baroque loses its pomp like a child with its pacifier
torn from its hands
& the mirrored flame of time burns out
who will hold her hand? but herself –
clasped in the lap of sin.

cut the hair,
shed the dress
& fat.
make yourself a man.
blow out the candle
with that rosy temptation,
& then abandon the lip of sin.

the bone will meet the floor
when you rise.
if you cut yourself down
with that gold frame
& your reflection disappears –
well, then,
in the dark, you could be forgiven.

Fairy dust and dragon’s breathe
Angels’ wings and Sapphics’ blessed
Love and sex but a haze
Melted under her passionate gaze

A lavender fairy
with dark eyes
A friend, a muse
A confidante
A prize
One look and magic happens
It starts deep within
Pushes and pulls
It wears you thin

Resistance is vain
Either way there will be pain
But is it worth the love and lose
To feel and reel
And at what cost

Vision blurs with lust and zeal
All colors of her palette
Are revealed
The pleasure wrought
Is like no other

But these feelings I must cover

Her company is sought daily
For her friendship mean so much
A laugh, a cry, a giggle, a sigh
Yet it is the taste of her lips
That makes me fly

Two hearts left unbroken is the goal
But can we find a way to remain whole
As passion pushes us farther a field
We both know there’ll come a time
Where we must yield

The secret’s safe with me
It won’t be long before I flee
And until then the fire will burn bright
Her taste, her smile
Are not easy to resist
But for now
All I really want
Is a kiss…….

A woman, two hands, four kids in tow like a Netflix thriller,
Road after road, déjà vu in the rear-view,
Strong as granite, but damn, she’s still runway-ready,
Waking up to chaos, eyes heavy with sleepless nights,
School’s a monster, deadlines biting at her heels,
But she smiles, because what else can she do?
This isn’t a glass of wine – it’s a marathon,
Wisdom’s path, raw and relentless,
And at night, she laughs,
“That’s life, love the tank top.”

Fridays are like poker chips in this bar where numbers and lives collide. Rich men and
hustlers meet in a slow-burn blues, and I’m scribbling poems between equations and grease
stains. Time stretches, stuck in slow motion, but midnight hits and the place wakes up. I’m
done with it. I’m just another number in a broken equation, another player searching for
meaning in the noise.

There are no guarantees, but that’s the plan.
Every morning, I feel uncertain,
Every step seems to lead me astray,
Every day is a new equation,
A lifetime warranty seems unlikely,
Guarantees disappear like smoke from a late-night cigarette,
And I’m left exposed, like Thursday without croissants.
Tomorrow’s a mystery, today’s a mess,
Life’s a magic trick without the rabbit,
Another Amazon box I didn’t order,
But I’ll open it anyway.