Mateo Perez Lara: MEMORY REMAINS AS SKELETON

Mateo Perez Lara
MEMORY REMAINS AS SKELETON

The lover:

I cut into Mark’s frail // pulled out anxious

apologies weathered by silence, we never said much

but I come up with shame, loads of Jack Daniel’s

sketches of boys he wanted more of and

I could blame myself or blame him

but all we have left is desolation and too many questions

a hollow cavity meant to be filled up is still empty

love is dragged across

pulled out anger, its bitterness buds

buzzed and vomits-up from those drinks at the bar

and I remember the night I fell out

of Mark’s truck // toppled down

that hill, stained shirt, flowered

from the wine, so wretched and red like me //

the way Mark // never loved anyone that was not white

and if I could ask him now

we would still fight about that, but he

has already gone, // I am left

with this husk, this is what

I feud with, this is what I

rattle the cage with another murmur

another offering.

Mateo Perez Lara is a queer, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They received their MFA in Poetry as part of the first cohort to graduate from Randolph College’s Creative Writing Program. They are an editor for Block Chronicles and a Communications Specialist for Nectar Digital Collaborative. They have a chapbook, Glitter Gods, published with Thirty West Publishing House. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, and elsewhere.