Interspatial Dissonance
Through the leylines of the cosmos, spacey coughs produce
a Picasso just chilling in the kitchen. I can’t tell if it’s the weed I’m being
made to smoke or these cats I’m allergic to, but I can’t stop crying.
I don’t like staying in this house because I’m so terrified of money
but this is the only place we can stay because my partner is housesitting.
Her and her best friend laugh at me because I can’t stop crying or coughing.
These white kids go through weed like it’s nothing, because it is nothing. It’s a
slap on the wrist. It takes up empty space in their cars almost invisible to police.
When I’m here, on the east end of Long Island, I am so visible to everyone.
The best deli here only plays country music. On the wall, there are written
instructions from management about this. I can’t get a sandwich without
finding out what’s written on the front side of the red cap. My mom says
I want this. I keep telling her I hate that. No, she means I’m bougie;
the same way my dad says white boy. At least my partner doesn’t call me white.
She just doesn’t like how attached I am to my brown skin or my brown family.
My mom continues to say what she actually means: I want deconstructed chorizo eggs
Benedict at a spot, by the beach, sharing a mimosa with a woman whose only
color-identifying options are blonde or brunette. My mom thinks she’s reassuring me;
saying that she’ll love the gray eyed-children my future wife will give her. I tell her
she better love my gray-eared cat, because at least my cat won’t purposefully
make me cry & if my cat laughs when I do, it will be an accident.
J.C. Rodriguez is a queer pinoy-latinx poet and educator from Westbury, NY. His writing has appeared in Voicemail Poems, Meow Meow Pow Pow, Tilde, and elsewhere. He is a poetry reader for Interstellar Flight Press and occasionally releases zines under his “imprint”, Follow the Sea. He loves skateboarding and cheeseburgers.
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