When you see your mother on the floor, tears
flooding splintered cracks, ¿what do you tell her?
¿What do you tell your mother when she says
quiero volar de aqui like birds?
Jumping nest before their wings flesh out. Crash
on asphalt. Waxy beaks open then close.
Open close. ¿What do you tell your mother
when she says that and her face figures
a death mask? Plastered panic, marbled lips.
¿Do you kneel beside her, plead? Quédate
aquí, mira mis errores, please see
my world, y déjame ver el tuyo.
Your arms shielding feathers around her shivering
shoulders like gauze, soft like a shawl or a glove.
Alejandro Lemus-Gomez
Finding home in Miami, Florida and rural North Georgia, Alejandro Lemus-Gomez is a Cuban-American poet and Davies-Jackson Scholar at the University of Cambridge. His written works are forthcoming or have appeared in The Acentos Review, Grist: A Journal of the Literary Arts, The Afro-Hispanic Review, and The Journal among others. @alejandrolemgom
