Hummingbird’s Clothing
I am all wing and hollowed bone
strung together with frayed nerves.
No, I am not darting aimlessly—
my job, thankless, is to connect
your backyard’s invisible braille,
while tilting, drunk on scarlet nectar.
Lean close to hear my buzzing
revelation: I am an Anger God!
Praying for a brawl, a brother
to fly too close and reveal me:
King of the low-hung sky! Each
wingbeat jackhammers the day
into submission as the sweet breath
detonates on my savage tongue!
—Indigo Moor
The Last Thing He Said
“Be proud because we’re Mexicans,
and if they
don’t like it, just turn
your head and walk away.
If you haven’t noticed, mijo,
this world goes on
in every goddamn direction
whether you want it to
or not.”
And just like that
he was gone
—a trail of weed smoke and wisdom,
wagging into the horizon.
And to this day, a scruffy
cholo with brown
skin and a bad leg
limps past
and my eyes sliver
like closed doors and I have to sit
down for a second—thoughts
rushing past, like speeding trains
in the night.
It’s almost too much
to think of the gristly days,
that bus ride from Sacramento
to Boston where I sat, tweaked out,
for a week on a Greyhound,
too wired and poor to eat.
He waited at the station
for seven days with two black eyes,
a set of brass knuckles
and a warrant for his arrest.
It’s too much to think
about when grandma
asked him to recite a prayer
and for the first time in 20 years
he put down his glass
and cried the way Mexicans do
when they find out there is
no God:
Creo en el Espíritu Santo,
en la Santa Iglesia Católica,
la comunión de los Santos,
en el perdon de los pecados,
la resurrección de los muertos
y la vida eterna.
And after that we wiped away
our tears, forgot how to speak Spanish
and got drunker
than we’d ever been,
spilling out of that
East Los apartment
into the world
like masses of hot lava
burning up our livers
till the frustrated sun
tucked itself
into the cool bed of morning.
A life full of discarded things
is what we were given. Humans,
like old bibles, lie
tattered, dirty and useless.
I wonder what he is doing now
My father, the broken schitzo
who wore his sickness like
a neon coat.
Walking through this shithole
of a city,
Nina Simone ripping
my heart out
through an old pair of headphones,
I watch a dirty black mutt
sitting in a junk yard
so stupid in his world
of chain link and bone scraps,
rags and old iron.
If you were here I’d tell you I miss you
and that there’s not much news
save for a funny headline
telling us about some frumpy
rube in Arkansas who found
Mother Theresa’s tit
poking out of her pancake.
And, in this way, unwise and reckless, without you
unholy father,
if you haven’t noticed,
this world goes on in every goddamn direction,
whether you want it to
or not.
—Josh Fernandez
