OXIDANT | ENGINE : Issue 7
Esteban Rodriguez
Lipstick
After hours of wine coolers,
photo albums and love letters
from men she almost married,
my mother tried a new one:
Candy Apple, Oxblood,
Russian Red, each a variation
of what her body – heavy,
lopsided – had never been,
and what still wasn't when,
at the bathroom sink, she’d apply,
wipe, reapply, wipe, until nothing –
no canas, crow’s feet, no black rings
beneath her eyelids – distracted
from the gentle smear across
her lips, from those shades I too
would try, aware it wasn't meant
for boys, and that at any moment,
as I stared at the mirror, lifted
my chin, my mother could walk in,
catch me with a smile her own face
had yet to reflect.
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Por amor
Yesterday I wanted to
write of it: the field, the goats,
the hope that every kid
I turned over – their muddy,
trembling legs locked
in my palms – would just
as soon forget how my father
applied the elastrator,
or how he'd whisper
to himself, claim, in a language
too mournful to understand,
what I assumed was acceptance,
regret, or whatever feeling
allowed him to move
from the barn to the field
to the house, then back out again,
watching the plains, the stars,
the moon that proselytized
a metaphor that caved
the more I tried to make it one,
and the more I rendered my father
a bruised and oversized silhouette,
pacing a scarred terrain,
and failing, no matter how long
he walked, to ponder the details
the next day: the struggle,
the bleats, the sense that there
was purpose to our grips,
and that I, so apt to let
my thoughts wander
from scene to scene,
wouldn't let myself think
about nights when he swayed
from the couch to his room,
rubbed his half-defeated hands
on my mother's waist,
and tried, with the parts of him
that bore the most weight,
to move past the door,
where he’d force himself
to conceive a new darkness,
and where he wouldn’t
have to face the light’s
judgment, wouldn’t have
to feel the brightness beg
for his blurry flesh
to return.
Esteban Rodríguez is the author of Dusk & Dust (Hub City Press, 2019). His poetry has appeared in The Gettysburg Review, New England Review, Washington Square Review, and Puerto del Sol, with new poems forthcoming in phoebe, TriQuarterly, and Blackbox Manifold. He lives with his family and teaches in Austin, Texas.