cigarette fish.

i like standing around

           together outside

    breath

              like we’re smoking cigarettes

  i used to hate cigarettes

now they are fog

            and

                 mist

  maybe that ember on the end

spitting ash

        glowing nicotine

brings warmth.

    and

it is Now, februarygone,

that i begin to think of the ocean again.

        sand

salt

   skin burned all copper like pennies.

 and watermelon and stained freckle cheeks.

           we are fish.then.

    we are colors

                   even the water is warm.

     then. too warm.

 like the sparks

             fell

out of the cigarettes

             and hit the blue.

Orange Tree

More writings for my Persuasive Writing class. It's so much fun!

Sun shoots through my window and shatters against my eyes—green, with orange circles—and the inside of my eyelids is an orange tree. I think of the orange tree that was the only fence between us and Maria Teresa, the only fence between our driveway and hers. It was the only fence between me and that old lady who grabbed my shoulders once and shook me and yelled Spanish at my ears. But sometimes—when the blossoms smelled so strong I could feel the smooth rind of an orange in my hand and taste the bitterness of opening it with my teeth and the sweetness of juice dribbling down my throat—I’d step off our driveway and into her grass. The tree is gone now and so is she. She died—she was dead on her tiled kitchen floor for two days before someone found her—and Greeks moved in with screaming kids and funny names. They cut it down. They cut down that old orange tree, but I can still see it when the sun shines green and orange on my eyes.

Salted Sea Grass

An exercise for my Persuasive Writing class. Winter makes me talk about the beach.

  Sand scratched my shoulders and the bottoms of my feet, itchy with salt water. I watched ichthyomorphic clouds sit blobularly in the sky. Intorted waves threw a dead fish next to my toes; its tessellated scales were peeling and it already smelled. I walked toward the jetty, stepping around crabs that were cutting anfractuous paths through the shells and the sea grass. There was an old man standing on the rocks; a fishing pole dangled from his hand. His skin hung from his bones like an oversized leather jacket; a scraggy white beard hung down to his belly button; dark hair tufted along his shoulder blades. My brother fishes. He takes a boat into the waves and comes home—sandy and salty and sunburned—with a cooler full of fish. We wrap them in foil and lemon and pepper and grill them until their tessellated scales peel off with the blackened tinfoil.