While Looking Back on the Planets
by Alfredo Aguilar
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i confess, i had grown
tired of earth. or rather, of the empires on it. i had once ran through every room pelt. i saw the earth carvers adorn themselves with the feathers of dead birds, while the birds lay, i built a rocket from fistfuls of scrap metal. i took a helmet & called myself cosmonaut. i maneuvered in a direction between saturn & its moons. i choose an eternity that opens itself again & again, like a sky permitting a hundred points |
inside a mansion insisting i & the people i loved were not foreign or less than an animal’s stomachs full of plastic. with each passing year i watched a lush hillside shrink until it could fit inside a bowl. i felt mattered, though the direction wasn’t important. forever was on every side. i measured devotion in the distance of light to pierce its shadow every single night. |
Alfredo Aguilar is the son of Mexican immigrants. He is the author of the forthcoming chapbooks Recuerdo (YesYes Books, 2018) & What Happens On Earth (BOAAT Press, 2018). He has received fellowships from VONA & the Bread Loaf Writer’s Conference. His work has appeared or is currently forthcoming in The Adroit Journal, Anomaly, Best New Poets 2017, & elsewhere. He lives in North County San Diego.