When You Fell
Joey Mancinelli
Aunties pouring coffee
beans into the cuts by your eye,
your brother pushing downstairs
complex powder
in Riverside, cementing
tear of michelada,
as crosses and pick-up lines
a boy pretty
with copper piping necklaced
in faux gold.
Dark roast clotting
the depression
in your skin, everyday Starbucks
Grande too expensive,
the cost of living
Mexicans across rivers
discussed at lime green
porcelain kitchen tables
and in air-conditioned boardrooms,
Mexicans.
We don’t go to the doctor
for anything other than grounds
would not have a left a scar
21 years later,
putting blue contacts from China
under your eyelids in America
you dye black hairs blonde
to heal,
an ointment of pop
5 Gum plastered by Nike sole
on $/ft2 installed mall floor,
hydrating cucumber mask
in pesticide and wax,
rose glasses, the mood,
in H&M fitting rooms
if only I looked like you
America, plastic wrapped abundant,
chicken thigh tanked fraternal bicep.
Washing machine spin cycles
or helicopter shots
of apple cider vinegar
sooth anxiety North,
waves of grain you vomit
too heavy to stomach
infringed skylights,
“Are you an American citizen?”
asked the voice in the desert.
Sometimes,
new moon looks like bottom
of a cup in Flint, MI
or crude oil bubbling bruised
haloed eyes intercontinentally,
at interstate traffic light
a person squeegees
for free and crystal
clear the BMW windshield,
and could the wheel distinguish
bodies from asphalt
to LA, all fluid and radiant.
Eating sandy Doritos
under the umbrella shadow
so as not to darken,
you were only 10
when invited into his home,
you didn’t know
what rape was
yet America.
Queerly, I quilted myself in sun
to appear as you,
and plummeted the seam, also.
Joey Mancinelli: "I was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1996. I studied History at UW-Madison. Aria Aber was my poetry instructor for two semesters. I am working on my first collection of poetry while I travel The West."
