ISSUE 11

Rose Marie Torres

 

Nothing ever tastes good when I make it

Still, I zest
like a small devotion,
even try to follow
the recipe this time.

You say,
God, I love this,
like I’ve done something brave.
I say I just felt like baking.

What I really mean is:
I didn’t want to lie in bed
all day, still enough to forget
I have a body,
and call that endurance.

You ask what’s in it,
and I say lemon.
You nod like that explains it.

Later, you find a shard,
pale against the yellow.
You say eggshell
and laugh.

It doesn’t matter.

But I think it was me.
I think you tasted my bones.

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la loba

barefoot, i skip over

spur-weed and caliche rock

trailing blood from the arroyo
into my mother's kitchen

she searches in the arroz for the tongue
she buried last winter as i dig

for the break beneath my ribs
for what we were before: a land

without lines, a known threat

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