M. A. Rodriguez

Drawbridge

Train tracks lead to a place

in windswept wetlands

where abandoned homes

are more like ghosts with walls.

They make me think of

dead dreams deteriorating

under the scorching summer sun.

And just like those skeletal

structures sinking into the bay,

I could fade into the void of my

history much the same way.

Sceliphron

A blue mud dauber cuts
…..through the pale air and interrupts

my burial. In the light, it takes
…..the shape of an iridescent eye

that never flinches in the wind.
…..Its body stands out against the brown

of the soil soaked in sun. It appears alien
…..in this environment with a wide

head and a thread-thin petiole.
…..Galaxies burn inside the pilot light

of its abdomen, and its metallic wings
…..activate more gray matter

than complex mathematical equations.
…..It buzzes in shades of black

and blue before the call of death.
…..It stays on the ground for a moment

and then flies away, taking with it
…..the ghost of my helix.

Coyotes of the West

He had a gift for turning
songs into prayers

and warm tears into honey.
Wherever he stepped the

soil seemed to turn bone-white
and the pastel horizon

would melt like crayons
left out in the heat of the sun.

With an appetite for
the girls with paper halos

and fairy-tale wishes, he watched
as they orbited around him like

broken satellites.
Maybe his embrace felt like

shelter in the hollows of the desert.
In the valley of white rabbits

he studied Dale Carnegie texts.
And in prison he extracted

what he could from
the mouths of the pimps

until he had enough teeth
to devour the world.

M. A. Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet based in the San Francisco Bay Area. His poetry has appeared in The Road Not Taken.