After Natalie Diaz

By Anthony Aguero

Much younger than I am now
sat an obsolete, black bag that
whispered my name like the fruit
you and I have sinned over time
and time again. I am drawn,
then devoured, and finally at a
pause – my hand in midflight.
This bag is not with insulin needles.
This bag is dad’s next source of income.
That bag almost had me tricked.

The smell of a swampy canal and
catfish is how I’ll remember my
dad’s hands – O, those eyes of yours,
both dipped into the darkest evening.
That widened gaze shrieking
avenge, or sorry, or love.
No, saying I have bloodied my life.
Perdoname mijo. Who are you?
He shovels canal mud from his nail.

He shovels a hole in the backyard,
still that scent, but his eyes more
green or jaundiced with intent now.
You could have missed him dig
those hands into that hat, or hole,
sorry my eyes were meant to be closed,
recovering a round Tupperware filled
with precious crystals mother warned
me about. How they capture lives and
their screams were never heard.

I could’ve sworn I just heard you scream.
Wasn’t that you? Oh, sorry. My imagination
and all those ghosts.
 
There is a perfectly drawn, nude woman
in dad’s garage, and I am sure
any straight man or patron of the naked
would love this art in their home.
There is also an air mattress I don’t sit-
on. The sound of aggressive pornography
plays on a CRT TV set. He is on drugs,
as am I. Scattered all around us, a throne
designed by Corus, but unleashed.
The drawn woman watching over us.

On the weekends custody has us with him,
he’d have us sit in his pickup truck at various
stops in multiple cities within Imperial County.
The clarity of putting pieces together
much later, and how much brother and I
easily found adventure.
I wonder what he loved more.
He makes one more stop.

There is a man in the backyard of grandma’s home
whose head falls into his lap like a downpour of
emotion happening and he cannot contain the
bobbing skull that contains such fury, such sorrow.
My dad is a dancer with swift feet and pools of 
sweat burrowed with the scent of swamp, catfish, 
and something medicinal leaking from the mirror
of a body borrowed. Dormir, padre, dormir.

I, twice, borrowed my dad for the drugs I needed.
This is my ceremonious moment of the new car
I had been begging and begging for since the 
beginning of high school. All of those good grades
and excellent attendance record: the drugs I need.
He treats me like the transaction I asked for.
Who ever said love cannot also be timely?

He grinds the salt off of his already salted teeth.
Checks his breath and wipes the sweat off of his
forehead with some handkerchief. He asks me how
I am doing. I say everything is going okay. Then –
pause. He speaks as if he has something to say,
then I realize my dad is high once again.
He tells me he loves me and I can’t help and wonder
how to love the man with a crystal hidden under
the same tongue saying I love you.

Anthony Aguero is a queer writer in Los Angeles, CA. His work has appeared or will appear in Rhino Poetry, The Acentos Review, Bangalore Review, 2River View, The Temz Review, and Cathexis Northwest Press. Follow him on social media @shesnotinsorry.