LatinosUSA

The name of the nameless

Like the escaping sand time, the trap for the survivor slams shut. Fear is like a bird cornered in a room in tight dust that can never be drunk. This swan thirst for silence that can never be quenched and only death. And only death opens new sounds of old walls. In these walls, my love languishes like a tulip in a greenhouse. Like blood in veins, like walls in a ruined house, so my love is kept. This bird has no beak and no key. Nothing can be drunk or opened except death. And death is just a music box at the bottom of which a bottomless secret is kept. This is not love. This is not happiness. I do not know what is kept at the bottom of the music box and perhaps I have gone deaf. Swallow this sounding pain because there is nothing left of the candy of lips. Bony palms and humble knuckles gave me the last sips of hope. The corner of my mouth sharpened cruelly. I love you. I love you. Another man on another street that I love. I love men. I am porcelain. I am broken porcelain. I hate men. Another man who turned out to be a random passerby. But what about love? I want to kill the love inside my heavy, stone-weary chest. But fear is like a bird tangled in the hair of my room. This bird flounders and tries to flap its wings as if it knows what death is. Death is nothing more than a set of letters of the Babylonian alphabet of the unknown. And the window is open.

previously published in Honest Ulsterman

~~

A mirror reflects a mirror

i touch you with fear like an ear to a talking shell
and much afraid that you will crumble
like a prince in his sand palace

and when you fall apart i think about what killed you
aids suicide loneliness or just that you were
never beyond my dreams and imagination

the news reported about a transgender refugee
who hanged himself with a jump rope in a communal shower
and then i realized that i don’t give a damn about him just
like everyone else doesn’t give a damn about me
this spiral of loneliness reflected in each other will be eternal

in an attempt to interrupt this mirror game
i write to a guy from tinder he sends me a message
where he writes that he wants sex
i delete tinder and close the tab with the news feed

the shell by my ear becomes a shell again
this shell doesn’t want to talk to me anymore
i’m pretending again that i don’t need anyone

my leg is starting to show signs of childhood
from being hit with a jump rope

previously published in Triggerfish Review

~~

Only the blind can teach the blind

my dad won’t let me die on wednesdays
my dad won’t let me live on wednesdays
he wants to send my sister to a convent so she won’t kiss girls
he wants to send me to kill men in vietnam so I won’t kiss girls
my mom doesn’t know how to act and is silent
my mom is silent and all she can do is cook dinner
this dinner lasts forever
i want to cut this eternity
like cutting the silence of the night
like tearing birds from the sky
nobody knows what to expect from dad
nobody knows how to drink patient humility
pink darkness seeps into the house
and the house turned into a monster can’t spit us out again
the sky in the ceiling is colorless and stars are burning above the house
i joyfully believe that one day these stars will explode and destroy everything

previously published in Triggerfish Review

~~

Big letter

1
snakes scratch feet

2
God wipes the dew from his eyes

3
dawn of hunger
remember the name eyelid
rabbits hiding in the fire

4
my mother doesn’t know
what happens after death

im silent and i cant tell
her about this ever anymore

previously published in Egophobia

~~

The forceps scratch the chitin

The forceps scratch the chitin
The insect knows how to endure
My six limbs are numb
I screamed like a newborn
Above the head of the tree I saw my mother
I asked my mother why my toys only have two limbs
Mom didn’t answer anything apparently because I’m no longer a child
Suddenly a white dove flew off a branch
Who would have thought that hungry pigeons eat everything?
I was born to be eaten

Previously published in Moonday Mag