In the end, we’re all flattened against each other, left alone in a library

In the middle of a road in the middle of summer

Just this Mausoleum of Chisme waiting to be page-turned

By a finger en la future

In the end, we’re all fed up with language, turned off

By other voices & how they sound like our voices, so

In the end, we’re all together so we might as well

Be grinding

I am the Nene of Dada, the absurdist horchata

A whore-player who juts & jets his lines across the page until he is bird no more

A Surrealist papusa in the mouth of an orisha

I am meant to be gnashed & swallowed, yum yum as you lick your thumb

An Orphic empanada in the mouth of Elegua

About to be mashed to bits, yeehaw

A player shampooing my pelo, making my plea

As stars die & catch fire in my hands

I am a smooth-sayer bamboozling through a wet jungle,

Doodling my Self-Portrait on a Stray Leaf

Creo que I make air

For the hungriest sunbathers who believe they are suncatchers

Creo que I make hair stand up o I beckon you: come home to eat

I am for the hungriest sunbathers o para mis amigas who believe they are suncatchers

O para mis hormigas who carry the leaf from the bosque to mantillas

Up to las Reinas

I make manna appear where there was once no manna; I lay

In cabanas & want your body like Spanish

Like light wants to vanish
Like light wants a leaf; I want your body to be the body

I am nobody beneath