"How Wrong," "Let's Make a Deal," and "Shoe House"
How Wrong
After Pier Paolo Pasolini
How wrong it feels
to remain so quiet
when I feel so unquiet
as fate becomes
so final like murder.
How not well I feel
in my silent ways.
I should be humming, shouting,
and agitated. I should be
screaming out.
How not well I am
with feelings bottled up
in the pit of my stomach.
I feel as If I had swallowed
every drop of saltwater from the sea.
Let’s Make a Deal
Let’s make a deal.
I will not force any words.
I will not use the word allocate,
too late. I have no image,
no brand, no reason to be
someone I am not.
Unless I can be a bird
or a cloud, in a poem,
of course, that will be
my grandiose dream.
If you do not like my politics,
too bad. No orange clown
will ever gain my trust,
and never my vote,
not even as a joke.
I am impulsive to a point,
maybe drink a cup of coffee
that costs a bit too much.
Let me reiterate,
I will not use the word
allocate in a poem, too late,
but not again if I can help it.
Shoe House
I lived in a shoe
with another family
with my children
and everyone’s
children. Small
like grains of sand
we were, sleeping
on the white laces.
The little house moved
as shoes tend to do.
I could see the world
through the holes
where the laces went
in. I liked the shoe
house better than
the foot that wore it.
Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal lives in West Covina, CA, works in Los Angeles County, and is the author of Raw Materials (Pygmy Forest Press). His poetry, prose, and art has appeared in Blue Collar Review, Escape Into Life, Nerve Cowboy, Triggerfish, and Yellow Mama Magazine. His broadsides, chapbooks and poetry books have appeared in Alternating Current Press, Deadbeat Press, Four Feathers Press, Kendra Steiner Editions, New American Imagist, New Polish Beat, Poet's Democracy, Rogue Wolf Press, and Ten Pages Press. Luis recommends St. Jude Children's Research Hospital.
