New Yorker 2016 in Poems

The year is the only thing renewed since I am here back at home. My whole world has been paralyzed and it leaves me no choices but lying on the couch and reading poem.

Dear New Yorker! You filled me a lot this year, with words, phrases, and sentences, with their embedded magical power. You made my world lightened-up during days such these I am struggling in.

“Erik Estrada Defends His Place in the Canon,” by J. Estanislao Lopez (June 6 & 13, 2016)

Back then, I sold snow cones with my grandfather
and learned to shortchange. I wasn’t raised to be a beauty.
Back then, my mother’s Spanish moved about the house
like a ghost only she could see.
Back when I knew what was good for me,
the stage ached for my foot to grace it.

“Landscape With Loanword and Solstice,” by Lynn Melnick (August 22, 2016)

Say yes
so I let him run me to the limits

in a pickup though I know better
than to expect

the chaparral
to grow much through trauma

except in order to withstand extinction  

and the rest of 2016 is here.