ISSN: 1941-4137
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
POETRY THAT ENACTS THE ARTISTIC AND CREATIVE PURITY OF GLASS
Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry has appeared in The Road Not Taken.
Poets Resist
Edited by Samantha Duncan
March 18, 2019
Edited by Samantha Duncan
March 18, 2019
Castaways
My eye floaters don’t make me think
of the coiled rattlesnakes on Gadsden flags.
On my iPhone, I’m listening to a slowed down
version of Frank Ocean’s “Nights” while watching
part of a nature show about a species of bird
that disperses plant seeds to oceanic islands
and can stay in the air for four years.
An island appears on the TV screen
and from an aerial view, it looks like
a slice of blue agate. One of the next shots
is of a bird gliding over water with
a piece of plant dangling from its body
and I’m waiting for it to fall at any second.
It doesn’t make me think of brown children
clinging to their mothers as they cross rivers
and carpets of sand and bone until their shoes wear away.
It doesn’t make me think of my grandmother
as a little girl in Mexico eating spoonfuls of sugar
and cleaning bird cages inside a quinta
after her family had to relocate following the passing
of her father from typhoid. She came to this country
with a dream the size of a seed lodged in her lung,
having once thought that oranges and peanuts
made her rich. A random shot of a coconut
floating in the sea doesn’t make me think of
the white baby chasing a dollar on Nirvana’s
Nevermind cover. It doesn’t make me think of
taking pages of my Moleskine notebook
and stuffing them down my throat and into my
glass stomach before I cast myself away
and wait for someone to find me and read
the poetry of my insides titled DONT TREAD ON ME.
Poets Resist is published by Glass Poetry Press.
All contents © the author.
All contents © the author.
