Poetry

Would you make love to me if I had two heads?I promise it’ll be fun, a two-for-the-price-of-one big-box-department-store-weekly-special:Just add water! And my extra head magically sprouts out of my neck, birthing quicker than the Chia PetI was dying to bring home back in the nineties, with a grocery cart full and checkout-stand tabloids and scandaland …

while quarantining, you wear the partitioned office room of asummer home, lent to you as charity so you would not infectyour grandmotherYou are told to not rummage through the office room’s items.That the homeowners are “private people.”after the buccal surgery, our last guest appeared as if a wraithin the thickness of the sauna mottled weave …

Listen to Gabriel Arquilevich read “from Sixty-Four Trips to Vons”: IX The parking- lot birds hop between carslike little dogs with wings looking for treats, making less of a call than a twisting scream from their metal- tree forest of concrete. Perched on a Funyun by my door, one bird hammers the snack into pieces …

They come back to you as a signwhen someone dies, they say, a dragonfly,some dull moth skimming a mud puddle,a hummingbird in the ditch’s goldenrod.But what if they are alive? But not allowedto live? How do they return, then? Cricketunder the sink for three nights straight.Why do we call it a song? That scraping,that needy …

We once drove 900 miles—from California to Idaho—in a borrowed car, the dead-drench of summerslicking our skin with its own salt, to witnessan eclipse’s totality. The darkened sun, the skypunched through. We barely made it, but didon duct tape & faith. Bear with me. I know how easyit is to forget a journey for all …

What if we are birds?Does that mean we also standon wires, tenderly, weightless.Are we in front ofor behind the red-tailed hawk?The last bird must watch us die.

for Sophie Main Beneath the arch’s underbelly, a prayer falls to our heartbeats.This is how I touch my humanity: fingers trailing a lavender stalk,whispers dripping in hushed symphony until its perfume wardsoff yesterday’s sunken breath. Here, you count to three& this is how I touch my humanity: fingers trailing a lavender stalk,chasing the seasons for …

I was in a cheerful mood, so I went to the zoo at the edge of the city. I laughed at a comic book with the idyllic zebras. I slow-danced to Chopin with the lavish gorillas. I sang a Spanish ballad to the stylish flamingos. At the end of the visit, I took a much-needed …

I was at a hidden local beach in Southern California away from the tourist traps of Santa Monica and Huntington Beach. The sun was shining but it wasn’t overwhelming; it was still early in the morning. That’s when I saw a flying jaguar in the late spring sky. It approached the sand and landed a …

For my upcoming trip, you hoardsweet cream, buttermilkbiscuits, peach jam and Bostoncream pie. My first taste of the Predator franchiseis Prey, dubbed in Comanche. The star,a woman uninterested with love.The alien, not drop-shipped into it. The trovejoins two hand-made garlic-beheading ice creams and two fire-burnt saltycaramels. By definition, some gruesome deaths are not possiblevia direct …