we will sing our small hells
into a stupor into deep wells
filled with shawls and reposado
as well as lengthy hugs between
acquaintances cum freshly frenzied friends
charity will park outside of a motel 6
on the coast wring our hands
of drownings and wrap our hearts in darkness
i am neither fresh to death
nor fresh for death your skin
our skin wails of nutmeg and cloves
my son my son
why so undone?
what had happened
y porqué no if it slaps then it slaps
there are some that would deny the sun its light
idling engines
dumplings
utterances both an old man kneels
in the snow while another bends at the bottom of a pool
noses pressed to the ground
ears aflame with more
Patrick Holian is a Mexican-American writer from San Francisco, California. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from St. Mary’s College of California and a PhD in English from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His fiction and poetry has appeared or is forthcoming in Suburban Diaspora, Mosaic Art & Literary Journal, Arkansas Review, Black Warrior Review, Gigantic Sequins, Oculus Vox, Yalobusha Review, and Whiskey Island Review. Patrick was a semi-finalist in the 2017 AmericanShort[er] Fiction contest, was a finalist in the 2019 Ploughshares Emerging Writer’s contest, and was recently a runner-up in the Black Warrior Review’s 2019 flash fiction contest.