ALEJANDRO LUCERO's chapbook, Sapello Son, was named the Editors’ Selection for the 2022 Frost Place Competition (Bull City Press, 2024). His latest work appears and is forthcoming in Best New Poets, The Cincinnati Review, Gulf Coast, The Florida Review, Passages North, RHINO, and The Southern Review. He lives in Baltimore, where he is an MFA candidate in the Writing Seminars at Johns Hopkins and is a managing editor for The Hopkins Review.
The clouds above her heaven hold back a thunderstorm
until she’s safe inside. Music splashes from the faucets.
She can let the water run here. A Man down the way
removes tattoos. It’s already paid for. His body’s covered
in lipstick. In the middle of the road, angels ride scooters
that only move when my mother takes a deep pull
from a Pall Mall. The ashes she flicks away are taken
by a breeze. She’s happy to be part of an ecosystem.
It starts pouring, a string of boats part the sky.
The angels pull over. A beautiful drum beat pangs
against my mother’s empty sink. Her sheets are lipstick
stained already like the rim of a wine glass,
and she’s rolling off the bed with this Man
who promised to hardly scar her.
Volume 15.1, winter 25
Alejandro Lucero
