Women. That’s what he wants. Women of all
shapes and sizes. Mexican and American. Maybe
even Polish, like the blond upstairs.
He wants them at his funeral, crying their eyes
out, so he can look down on them and smile and laugh
and remember and feel proud that he’s kept them
coming back for more. Coming back, for the parts
of his body they say they like the most. His eyes for
Maria la Amarillo. His chest, La Metiche Americana
de la vecindad. His hair, Sherry la Americana
de Michigan con the black Trans Am. Pilar la vieja,
para todo, for all his body.

After Zoe Saldana defends playing Nina Simone in her biopic by saying “For so many years, nobody knew who the [fuck] she was. She is essential to our American history. As a woman first, and only then as everything else.”

I looked at my Aunt Sarah skin;
my stay out the sun-
You already an eclipse- face.
Body an automatic rejection letter
erasure waiting to happen.

I birth a child, and the wet wound never closes.
My mother diagnoses postpartum casually
as if saying – mail is here, and your name is on it.
Explains the drilling is nothing I asked for, overripe nerves happen sometimes.