NIÑA

Evan Martinez

I.

You’d tell me under misty-eyed stars

We can never get caught

             And it wasn’t a plea or declaration.

Perhaps that’s why your body

never shuddered, even when

sentry’s flashlight cut through our condensed foray & I swear

                The pools of sweat on your taut back were not of this world.

Somewhere outside your father’s house,

   inside my mother’s car

                                            an unholy

                                            transnational

                                            union.

II.

Be gentle,

you’d tell me. Fumbling

is my nature so caressing you

was the task of my ancestor’s bleeding embrace. And when the fruits were ripened & consumed &

the rubble resting in peace,

       my hands were

       nowhere to be

       found.

​

CONSUMED

The hits grow less harsh

as the post sociocoital steam

intermingles with sweetandnoxious air.

How many drinks have you had?

         —genuine conversations?

Someone’s hips gyrate, while miles away a barren lakehouse keeper assembles

a line of animal byproduct dressed in various sauces but forgets to cook em thoroughly because usually the Help does the cooking and even then his technical wife does the

emergency cooking.

  How many ways can you slice

this relationship?

It’s garbled in our mouths, different matriculations, spirals & throngs resounding.

I wouldn’t worry, just the pre coke and holy nasal drippage.

Do you mind me, darling?

At high noon, endocrines are scheduled to shoot up

past at least five senses and seven stories—& the skylines’ll ripple through a visual field

we skip and flounce and bat eyes upon,

cracking whips, galloshing pints, encircling drainpipes

that burst from the ungodly force of what’s us. It has no name, just what it hears when we muster and cry back:

Please, try this thing we’ve made! It’s just a noun, And how many have we consumed

before?

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Evan Martinez is an aspiring creative from Baltimore currently living in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston. His professional concerns are providing social and emotional support to school-aged children. An empath by nature and a cynic by nurture, Mr. Martinez enjoys reading, writing, coloring, yoga, and cultivating joy & mindfulness among all people. He has been called glue, a blanket, and a thunderstorm. This is his first published work of poetry.