The Cloud

I refuse to believe
that The Cloud can be
understood. I’d like
instead to believe in
mystery, in a little bit
of magic. The answer
to why my new iPod
can’t automatically sync
with the computer
I’m looking at, or why time
insists on temporality, or
why memory fails me each
time when I try to recall
my LinkedIn password
should not be searchable
on Google. Rather,
it should be the opposite:
We forgot our smartphones
at home by accident and yet
we still managed to arrive.

Thanksgiving 2016

Today I am working on simplicity. An apple,
a banana, a handful of almonds
for breakfast. An email letter to a friend
traveling in Europe. Small cups of hot water
to soothe my aging guts. I will try not
to talk politics when my father
serves us the dead bird. I will try not
to disappoint my mother when I skip
her dry pumpkin pie. I will try not to forget
the hundreds of water protectors standing
in sub-freezing temperatures in
North Dakota, pelted with water cannons
and rubber bullets by a government
I am finding it harder and harder every day
to recognize. My brother in Alabama,
a traveler in the heart of Make America Great Again
country, texted me Happy Thanksgiving
with a bearded, animated image of himself
waving hello from inside a cornucopia.
Why not? Joy and hurt are plentiful.

Parading
for Mireyda

You asked me about my writing
the first time I met you. It was the third week
at my new job in our writing program.
We talked about Xicanismo and we
talked about our parents and tíos and tías
and we talked about coming to
identity. I told you I wasn’t writing
literary essays right now, maybe
I never would again. You said to me,
simply, that if I hit a productive period
I would be welcome anytime to share
my work with you and the other
Chicanx kids. Your offer meant more to me—
a White-passing Chicano with a White father’s
surname and a Mexican mother who learned
to forget her Spanish before I was born— than I
can ever express. I feel so grateful
to have known, even for a short time,
such a generous and warm person as you.
Rest in power, my friend, Xicana seester.
I will see you parading down Blackstone
Avenue and I will talk back yeah
with hand claps, yeah hand claps for you.