i draw a set of lips
draw them on the wall, green,
green lips and skin.
add lines of a silhouette and waist.
i want you to open,
as i drink from my bottle.
a green, three dollar chard bottle.
chalky cheap lips.
she sounded when i popped her open.
a cold sound, cold and green.
i held her by the waist
pressed her to my skin.
to the drawing I added skin.
shaped her like my bottle.
mirroring neck to chest to waist,
muddling over the asymmetric lips.
light travels through my bottle casting green
upon the wall and my art opens.
the window opens
gives breath to our skin.
the wine is green,
dyed from my art and the bottle,
and dyes my lips.
i think with my hand at my waist.
i draw her with a hand at her waist
a posture that is open
with open lips.
still unhappy, i scratch the wall our skin.
i swear and drink from the bottle.
i am drunk the world is green.
the wall the drawing are green.
it is wrong, her waist.
i drop the bottle,
empty on the floor, open
ideas dance in my skin
onto my lips
my ideas and lips are green
coloring skin and waist
from the now dead open bottle
Cid Galicia is a Mexican American poet who taught in New Orleans for over the past decade. He is in the final year of his MFA, through The University of Nebraska Omaha. He is a poetry editor for The Good Life Review, a reader for The Kitchen Table Quarterly, and this year’s FIRECRACKER Poetry Manuscript Awards. He was the recipient of the Richard Duggin Fellowship—granted for demonstrated excellence in writing, runner-up for the Academy of American Poets Helen W. Kenefick Poetry Prize, and most recently nominated for the Helen Hansen Outstanding Graduate Student Award. He is currently living in Los Angeles as an Intern to The Editor for The Red Hen Press. His work has appeared in The Watershed Review, the National Poetry Month Issue of The Elevation Review, Trestle Ties Issue 5, and the upcoming spring issue of Trampoline.