My poem, "Elegy for Avon Beyond Color Lipstick in Beige Shimmer, Discontinued" is featured in Monstering Mag, which publishes the creative work of disabled women, non-binary, trans, gender non-conforming, agender, and gender-expansive people. Check it out!
I used to cuddle
up close and rest my head on my father's big belly listening to the sibilant mysteries that swished around in there. He'd tap along to the music within or without him and I his drum complicated paradiddles along my arms the antibodies of rhythm I was to absorb. These days are so loud I rip out my hair along with the beat. I may have one eyebrow and a hairball but god can I dance. One and two and I forget Three and four and I reset. The past is something far off and beautiful like Venus or Mars or better yet, Saturn. It invites you to come and sit but you never can. Even if you could make it that far, and without air, what looks like it was built for you to rest upon would fall out from beneath you like a desk chair you'd plunge through strange gases and stones coming apart and disappearing through a trick door. Better to just tap along with the passage of time. The last passenger pigeon cooed without end
in a language that no one could understand with an accent like the wrinkles on the palm of your hand when it stopped, the silence said "never again." My tíoabuelo died not knowing his name leaving papi the only one left of fourteen his homeland across ocean and mountain and dream the blessing and curse that he packed up and came. Your heart is a muscle the size of your fist that can conquer anything but distance that can only strain against sinew to cross the expanse the space between what is and what might could exist. (Composed from the Spanish translations of book titles in the YA section of the local library.)
Remember that time, under the same star, a thousand times until always. I'll see you in outer space. Someone is lying, and if it was us? What remained of you, I believed it to be true. Every day is ours -- all of this that unites us -- the advantages of being invisible. |
Meesh Montoya
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