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Look at the dead men walk.
Look at the dead man speak.
See how he embraces his child.
See how he kisses his wife.
Watch the tape recording.
It plays on a loop.
The dead man lives.
Across an ocean, hundreds of miles
from home, the dead man's there
with other dead men.
There are different pictures
that the army won't show
the dead man's family.
Look at the dead men walk.
Look at the dead men speak.
If you look beyond what you see,
you can imagine anything.
The chairs gather with dust and cobwebs.
The table is full of baby gray spiders.
The rug is worn and infested with fleas.
The pillows are embroidered with bed bug bites.
I sleep on a lawn chair and smile to myself
on the mirrored ceiling.
The window screens are dirty and smeared
with dead fly blood.
In the chimney the smell of a dead rat lingers.
The lawn chair is new, but soon
the critters will find their way here
to join me and pester me.
When I turn off the lights the cockroaches
tap dance on the linoleum kitchen floor.
They scramble back into the darkness when
I turn the lights back on.
Moths gather around the table lamp’s light.
They buzz and burn. Under the couch
the crickets begin their pitch. They are by far
my favorite of all the critters in this house.
In the kitchen mosquitoes hover over scraps
of food on the dirty plates in the sink.
The slugs in the bathroom slide slowly on
the mold collecting on the peeling paint on the wall.
I embrace myself to keep warm.
I threw all my blankets in the wash, bed bugs
and all. I scratch at the lottery ticket
like I scratch at my arms and legs.
Soon I could afford a bigger home, somewhere
in the woods, where I could deal with bigger
critters, like bears and raccoons, or coyotes
and bats. I don’t want to deal with Jason or Freddy.
farting
a lone
terrorist laughs out
in a
desert hide out.
One billion dollars
in U.S.
tax money is spent
to fan the fart
away. A
guided missile
was launched
in the vicinity
of the
fart. The
terrorist long gone,
his laugh and fart an
echo,
punching holes
in our budget.
Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal, 40, was born in Cuernavaca, Morelos (Mexico), and has lived in Los Angeles County since age seven. He works in the mental health field. His poems in English and Spanish have appeared in The American Dissident, The Blue Collar Review, Pemmican Press, and Struggle Magazine. His first book of poems, Raw Materials, is from Pygmy Forest Press.