Essay on Poetry
for Robert Aaron Salinas Little Brother I know you didn’t ask for an Essay on poetry But the mouse in my pantry Needs exterminating And we won’t do it— Mom raised us with clean hands if nothing else— Great poets would strain to describe that fur of Protruding gray, A color that, like poetry, becomes the Word & little else— You didn’t ask to sleep on my Inherited couch, that velvet Panzer, trooper, But Pops gave us a broad back if nothing else— Things will start to change soon, I feel it in my verse Which is to say A career balancing the innards of my skull And when you send your pieces to review I judge them not by punctuation or clarity But rather how related our creature is In a different house of bones— Little Brother The right lines are hard to come by If one reads incessantly with sharpened preferences And this game of penchants isn’t for everyone But the next time you visit When 2017 is a faint dream I promise you’ll fall asleep on brand-new cushions For a bed of roses cuts it only on the page. Bio: Alex Z. Salinas is the author of poetry collections WARBLES and DREAMT, or The Lingering Phantoms of Equinox. He is also the author of a book of stories, City Lights From the Upside Down. His third collection of poems, Hispanic Sonnets, is forthcoming through FlowerSong Press. He holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary’s University, and lives in San Antonio, Texas.
Fevers of the Mind 