ANUEL RODRIGUEZ

Like Seed, Like Wrath

A dead end      leads to a trailer                         with a chained up
             brown dog with human-sick eyes.
                                                                                             The cars and trucks

             along the road are pollinated with dust and dirt,
             and it feels like             I’m witnessing
                                                                                                 the conception

of a new Dust Bowl.

                          A Confederate flag       is taped
                                                                                to the door of
                                                                                another trailer.
                                                                                              I watch an egret pause

                          itself in
                          brackish water nearby;                          it’s the same color

                          as a white hooded ghost.

Everything here is sinking

into the             darkening mud.          Clusters of abandoned boats

                                                                   in an ocean of reeds
                                                                   make me wonder if
                                                                                time is an

                                                                                              avalanche.

I once split myself
             in two because              I hated the things I loved.

I once dreamed of my father picking up a
                                                                                     spiked paddle

off the ground near a sculpture          of a giant light bulb.
He said he wanted to try          planting it in a hole    in his garden

to see if a new cactus would grow.      When I woke up the next morning,

             I did the same thing with my wrath.
                                                                                               Only I buried it in a
tooth-shaped hole                    where no one could find it.
As my secret cactus grew,
             I would feel its blooming flowers

like yellow flames splitting me open from the inside.

                                                     I’m tired of using my heart
                                                     as bait to try and catch my
                                                                   detached shadow in my crooked jaw. 

                                                                   There are no grapes

to transform here       and no wine to drown in.
                                                                                              Maybe God
is really an egret                    or a ghost formed from
                                                                            our leftover
                                                              light and dust.

I leave half of myself            behind in a town 

                                                                  lost in its skin.

And I return to a        bullet-starved existence           and wait for the rest
                                                                                of me to arrive like a scythe,
                                                                                cutting to the root

                                                                                              of all that creates me.

Vanabin

I was never the color                  yellow.

              I was born blue and never felt

the light of ochre                         in my veins.

              Before I met you, I spent most

nights carving             my darkness

              like it was anthracite.              You said

you always associated me with

              Van Gogh and my bipolar heart split

in half like a sunflowering geode.

              I could paint myself as a baby seal

wandering lost and disoriented in

              the desert, surrounded by black-backed

jackals, under a ripe                   lemon sun.

              I could paint a hole                   pooling yellow

in my carcass for you to make a home

              inside. I know I want to be cremated

when I die. Maybe my ashes can be

              turned into a                pear tree that you could

rest under—each fruit would be a yellow

              city waiting to be skinned from its shell.

Garden Suitcase Altar

I can feel parts of me spinning away from myself
              like moons wrapped in skin or brown paper bags.
                            I spent most of the morning Googling dead poets,

Jackson Pollock, and cyclothymia. I tried to write
              a poem about the green house and chicken coops
                            I found hidden away in a secret botanical garden.

At the time, I was looking for a nice place to bury
              my consciousness, but I was afraid everything would turn
                            black like my thoughts including the feathers and

bones of the chickens. Some of the red flowers
              looked like bell-shaped hearts and the yellow ones
                            on the cactus plants reminded me of votive candles

made of beeswax. Since I couldn't find a home for
              myself in the garden, I made a suitcase altar for it
                            instead that I could slide under my bed. Inside I

filled it with deformed twigs, flower heads,
              and a single rusted orange that I took from a hanging
                            fruit basket with a bird resting on the edge of it.

It made me think of you and how you tried ending
              your life multiple times. You died like a wounded
                            dove out in the cold and rain with a broken leg

from falling into a ravine. Sometimes I wonder
              what it felt like for you trying to escape your own fevered skin
                            when all you could do was scale man-made walls.

I thought about setting fire to the creek in your name
              with the matches in my mouth, but instead, I listened
                            to the synthesized cries of the peacocks nearby.

I haven't been to therapy in years and the receptionist
said I had to start over with an evaluation. The man
who called me asked me a series of questions over the phone.
I mentioned that I write poetry and he asked me what kind
because he used to write poetry too. He brought up
Emily Dickinson and asked me if I’d ever heard of her.

When I do finally see a psychologist in person, I wonder if
I'll want to draw Aztec icons for him to analyze like I'm Pollock.
Or maybe I'll show him my suitcase altar instead.
Maybe I should stop wearing black for a while and
become a white recluse, clutching shadows between
my teeth like tongues and leaving pearl echoes behind.
Maybe tonight I’ll dream of peacocks singing the blue in my ashes.

Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry has previously appeared in Glass: A Journal of Poetry (Poets Resist) and The Acentos Review.