Tag: joaquin emiliano

• May 13, 2022

  letters of transit.

  They zoomed in from above. A cul-de-sac development posing as a neighborhood. Surrounded by nothing, producing nothing. Desert inconsistencies, layer-cake sideshow of red, yellow, and a dusty blue sky. A row of houses that bordered on the preordained. White siding, windows in perfect sync, lawns like decorative bellies, sprawling. Falling just short of sidewalks that…
• May 4, 2022

  domestic.

    I had just settled in. Surrounded by all the simplest things. A near-empty room. Hardwood floors, high ceilings. Ensconced by three naked walls and a pair of looming casement windows, three stories above the gravel parking lot of Camelot Apartments. Lamp in the corner burning bright, spherical midnight. Loose-leaf paper scattered like ripe snowflakes.…
• April 18, 2022

  backchannels.

  Waited until past one in the a.m. to open the window. Snuck out onto the rooftop. Well past curfew. Limber steps leaving bare impressions on shingles and corrupted gutters. Stealthy against the current of stars and an outdated moon, moving towards yesterday me. Taking it slow at the outset. Pressing my body close as patrol…
• April 16, 2022

  at the gates.

  sat myself outside. red steps. back against a closed door. cigarette. Jack Daniel’s. music still bumping, catching a row of bikes parked against the fairground fence. and what was on my mind… 6:25, here’s how the air feels on a perfect day, taste of a willow tree. sun at a lower level, some 71 degrees.…
• April 12, 2022

  tell me.

  that’s just it, i said. everything tastes. and that’s what makes the best of memories unbearable. sent two strokes down along her arm, back up.  your pillowcase. the bench where we used to laugh over loaded drinks. the tree i once climbed without an exit plan, the bark, leaves, roots, dirt under my fingernails. separated…
• March 30, 2022

  wild palm.

  Just over the six-five wooden fence and some thirty feet beyond, a palm tree stands tall, her crown in its entirety peeking out and over, shag haircut a dark green. Neighboring lights keep her visible at night, create a double exposure of stark silhouette and a glowing, outlined aura. And on nights when a storm…
• March 20, 2022

  alphabet cum.

  i’m not going to not say what it was about that single entirety. sometimes you marvel at on top, side to side, from behind. one of us gets strapped down, turned around. so many ways you can breathe into someone’s ear, maybe several someones if the world had a way of smiling that day. there…
• March 8, 2022

  path.

  I was halfway down the path, mid sentence when I put my mouth on mute. Not because there was no one to talk to. That had been the case for the entirety of what was now an entire grey-layered week. Wasn’t because of the insistent tap of the knapsack as it beat against my back,…
• February 19, 2022

  color test.

  I was twenty-one with a bullet in my brain. Doing time at The Bishop. Served by the best, buyback every fourth drink. Picking juke box songs with impunity. Staring into space over shots of Jim Beam, gray shades tapped into glass ashtrays. Hustling tables at an Upper East Side five-star, taking orders from old money.…
• February 16, 2022

  suicide at 35.

    At the time, I couldn’t have told you how many years I had left to live. Spring of 2004 in the city of New York. The trees were on their yearly walkabout. Some going so far as to erupt in resplendent blemishes. Cherry petals rippled along Brooklyn streets and the walkways of Washington Square…