Octavio Quintanilla writes

Camaraderie

The ambulances are at it again.

        Someone chokes on a heart attack,

                  a child on a bike gets run over,

              a woman walks in on her man

                           fucking a stranger.

           It's cold outside, and from your second-floor window,

                    you can see white breath,

youngsters leaning against iron-gates.

      They, too, awakened by screams.

Now you understand each other:

           While you sleep, someone gets hurt.

Someone steps back from a window's ledge.

Skeleton's Ambulance --  Cathy Germay

Octavio Quintanilla paints

Frontexto: tu y yo nunca tuvimos cama 2

 (You and I never had bed alone we had fire)

Octavio Quintanilla writes

Migrations

When my father lost his memory,
he went on remembering he was lost.
I’m in a desert, he said.
Now I’m in a river.

He was always in another country
even as he sat on the sofa.
Where am I? he would ask
the news reporter on television.

When he slept, his eyes went on seeing—

The ceiling cut into pieces like cake
by the streetlights. The strange woman
leaning close, watching him sleep

Woman Watching a Sleeping Man (Second State) -- Erik Renssen

Octavio Quintanilla writes

Loneliness

As a boy, I’d climb trees,

reach into nests birds would leave unattended.

I’d fill my hand with small eggs, and often

one or two hatchlings would stare at me

from behind the sprigs.

There were times I wanted

to take them home, keep them as my own,

raise them, imagined their beaks

would one day open to call me, “Father.” 

Mockingbird Hatchlings -- Annie Glacken