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?
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.