Now is the moment you’ve all been waiting for…the unveiling of Expressionists!

As I mentioned before, I was lucky enough to have two poems selected for this year’s publication. So, without further ado, I will let the words speak for themselves…

Circles

As I unzip your sweater from

the crook of your neck

down, past the indent

of your belly button,

meeting the waistband of your

old, grey sweatpants,

your underwear reveals itself.

And as I pull the old t-shirt,

stained with grease of your old cars,

over your head,

I recognize the distinct

yet generic

hue of red and remember that it was

the shirt I grasped onto

as I learned to ride a bike.

And as I roll down the fraying

sweatpants past your knees

followed by the sly underwear,

now fully revealed,

it hits me.

As you sit, slumped over in

your chair before me,

vulnerable, naked,

as a continuous stream of drool

spills from a mouth of a head,
permanently hung in defeat,

it hits me.

As I take your hands and lean my weight

backwards,

catapulting you upwards from your

chair and into the tub,

and as the water continues to run,

I stick my fingertips in its

steady stream, testing the water’s temperature,

it hits me.

And as I squeeze soap onto a

washcloth and begin to create

steady circles across the expanse

of your hunched back,

it hits me.

You dressed me,

but now I dress you.

You fed me,

but now I feed you.

You bathed me,

but now I bathe you.

And I can do nothing but

watch the photographs,

the flashes of your memory

the parts of you disappear,

because trying to save them is like

grasping at the suds that

swirl down the drain.

Angelenos

They say that people

from Los Angeles are called

Angelenos,

which sounds a lot

like angels, but despite

wandering down a walk

lined with the fabricated

well-marketed

names of stars,

the people who push

carts filled with cans

emptied by other lips

are hard to place in

this landscape of heaven.

Maybe because I can’t see

their wings through the ragged

Disneyland sweatshirts

or the hole-ridden socks that

reveal seemingly permanent

black stained heels,

rough with the tread

of back alleyways

you don’t imagine you’d

find amongst His stars.

And as I follow them to

the piles of cans that surround

the makeshift cardboard

homes they’ve built,

a colony of heaven underneath

an overpass, I start to wonder

if they are misinformed.