Five poems by Octavio Quintanilla
Tough Guy
My brother points with the red nipple
of a cigarette to a guy sporting
trendy jeans and flip flops.
“Pussy,” he says.
“If you open him up, you’d see he has no guts.”
When drunk, my brother pours milk
between the legs of a beautiful girl,
and licks.
Then he returns to a time
when the sound of his name
pushed him to the end of the lunch line.
Hardly anyone could pronounce it.
Teachers tried to rename him.
Years later, he wants to go back.
He is still crouching under
the gym bleachers, trembling
at the principal’s office.
The boy in this bar forgets
he no longer has anything
to prove.
But prison breastfed him scorpions.
Now when he goes out,
he carries our mother’s prayer
like a necklace.
On his chest, the suffering
face of Christ,
bloody nest for birds.
Thieves
Who cares about who gets caught jumping
over someone else’s fence?
Mutts will bark.
Porch lights will sweep small critters
into another darkness.
Big deal.
Nothing will be stolen.
They came to lie on your bed.
Slip on your sandals.
Touch your daughter’s drawings.
But know that some of them need
to get caught
and so will leave you
fingerprints sealed in plastic bags.
You’ll find them on the table,
next to the green apples and the crumbs
of grief you leave for the hungry
wind to take.
Some will return the next day
and wait for you,
will sit on the doorstep,
apologize.
I’m sorry, one will say, but I live a sad life.
Black Throated Sparrow
Life’s oil;
to clean it, I need
the finger that condemns me
and the hands that set on fire
all the fools who believe
in mercy.
Crucified, Christ suffers
on a man’s forearm;
always homeless,
He makes His presence known
to the forlorn chosen
for sacrifice.
His wing is the whore
with a dream.
His dagger, the young thug
sobbing in a city jail.
Leave Christ in His nest,
and glide over fools,
who transmit sunlight
with a touch;
Point to the men
outlived by their children
and to the children
outlived by their desires.
My eye inside yours
looks past me
to cross histories
that have no place for us.
Out there, you lord over fields.
Death Study
1
It’s in the eye of strangers
as you pass by.
In the movement of your hand,
writing
In the breeze,
thick as fog.
2
Insatiable belly,
nostril full of sand.
With each passing day,
a little more lost
in your nightgown.
3
See it for yourself:
Eyes of the dying beast:
Black mirrors, reflecting
the quick light of
a falling star.
Landlords
You’re a stranger to them.
They’ve seen smoke zigzag
out of your lungs.
Have seen you smash a fly
with your favorite book.
When you’re not in, they find
a crucifix smeared with lipstick,
sweep under the sofa
an eyelash made of bone.
Embarrassed, they open
your handbag and meet
a bicycle on fire, a polished
cranium, two green cents.
Every day they see you descend,
have seen you soak with daylight
underneath your coat.
Every day they’re relieved the gun
hasn’t turned against you.
It takes its time.
They’ve seen how bad you want it.
They want you in love.
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Octavio Quintanilla is the author of the poetry collection, If I Go Missing (Slough Press, 2014). His work has appeared in Salamander, RHINO, Alaska Quarterly Review and elsewhere. He is the regional editor for Texas Books in Review and teaches Literature and Creative Writing at Our Lady of the Lake University in San Antonio, TX.