Anthony Aguero

The officer’s fists on the door, many fists on the door hungry for a body, for blood, in the name of justice. My father tending to the garden, a gardener gardening the language of others: a criminal, a calloused thief, a weed in his mouth between his teeth. At the door, more fists insisting Let me in! Let us in! His hands loosening the earth after harvest, making room for graves, for grass. His hands touching the plum then my hair then the earth touching God’s.

We were in Berlin — I had no one, not a reference of the once war torn country now in their most progressive era, Berghain and The Lab thousands of miles away from us. In those days, yes, I could dream with my eyes alert, two dark grapes begging for closure. I dreamed mostly with Christian, then, in his dark bedroom with the blinds drawn and thumping house music and two men tearing each other apart.

Ekphrasis I finally threw up the dead bees that’d been buzzing about my stomach for some months, propped them on metal prongs encased in glass panels as artifacts. Angling the light, I can almost see their wings’ old flutter in silvery stillness.