There are baby thoughts in the shape of seaweed & pirate knives they float over strips of shores & curl into a rainy parasol where a laboring red papaya truck awaits & there are the thoughts of Staff Sergeant Melanie Lippman—she's back from Afghanistan & cheers as a rhomboid ball burns through the flags of space— but she notices distant jagged zones on fire where the Company battles & there are the thoughts of a father Don Jose Emiliano in plaid with water on his face—his only son on the wet field for the first time—he is a man now how his fury tumbles & finds a route to launch & spin his body toward a shifting goal—is that my son he says.
Copyright © 2015 by Juan Felipe Herrera. Used with permission of the author.