Pray the grime-coated stairway of 1 Scammel Street. Smoke-stained walls and fallen chunks of plaster. The floor we painted cheer yellow.
At my chalice-smooth fingers / bronzed as judgment trumpets, one hand / glacier-blue, the other lilies and teeth—
Everything sanguine. Everything / illumined to unmask our every crater, valley, plateau.
reflected the blue wash above Arizona, as we snaked up the sides / of Thumb’s Butte, halfway between pine hills and the sagebrush floor
Carlos Andrés Gómez is a Columbian-American poet, author, actor, and speaker. He is the recipient the 2018 Broken River Prize, selected by Eduardo C. Corral, for his new collection of poems, Hijito (Platypus Press 2019).
In the basement of the crack house I used to visit / as an outreach worker on 121st street in Harlem, / I was convinced He refused / to travel north of 96th.
Conquest followed by red / and black and pale—beasts / of conflict, judgement, and death. / But what of this equine quartet—
