“My”

By: Dan Vargas

It wasn’t the summer

Solid days of rays

Crashing brittle grains

In my grass

-

It wasn’t the city

Pigeon friendly tower eaves

Motion-sickening swing singing

In my air

-

It wasn’t the tortillas

Slapped pale white, wrinkled hands

Needing love, kneading Manteca

In my kitchen

-

It wasn’t the tapeworm

Symbiotic cysticercosis bleeds

Small bodies floating and swirling

In my mind

-

it was shocking news poured from unconcerned lips parting into smile while sound echoed in ravines within the ridges where his tongue now stuck “well you have Graves’ Disease” as if this were some triumph of human confusion worthy of the Nobel Prize