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Jonathan Moya Apr 2020
I loved this old crooked tree
that refused to grow straight
with the sky but willed itself
to stretch with the horizon,
limbs resisting what every oak
near it wanted— to kiss the sun.

It had a brother, long since cut down,
its stump never uprooted, ground to chips.
Decades of weeping, trying to caress its kin,
had left it defiantly stunted, a hunchback
to its grief, its refusal to be another proper tree,
limbs desiring earth’s comfort to cloud’s hope.

The tornado swept south and
my old brick house was
left a blasted finger to its whims.
The old crooked tree was uprooted
like all the others oaks, yet granted the mercy
of caressing its waiting brother in its final fall.

My wife spent the time after the uprooting
like all the others after the storm,
dealing with the adjusters, collecting
the ashes, saving the memories that remained.
No thoughts of trees preoccupied her
and I was convalescing from cancer surgery.

Before we moved into a temporary place,
before the winds of rebuilding where beginning,
I asked for a quick drive by to see the damage
because I only ,imagined the destruction
from the aching confines of a hospital bed
and needed to firmly root it to mind and soul.

The reality was a little worse than the imagining.
The roof was gone, only an L of bricks remained.
The PTSD, anxiety, the sheer exhaustion
was already planting in my wife.
I cried for her. I cried for the last sight
of the old tree hugging stump, earth beneath.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2020
On this acre of unspoiled comfort
the hard winds blow once again now.
Through this acre of unspoiled comfort
the house falls once again now.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
so unlike a broken cry.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
once so sun caressed with smiles.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
once standing on unburied dreams.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
lingering near death.
This acre of unspoiled comfort
praying for its life now.
This acre of unspoiled comfort,
now I pledge my love again.
On this acre of unspoiled comfort.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2020
In a realm of two moons and three suns not
afraid to be besieged by everlasting brightness,
where everyone speaks from their heart spires
and devils and scorpions cavort with sprites,
magic coexisted with every day miracles.
People would cross on invisible bridges
as easily as Jesus walking on water,
on their way to their great soul’s quest.

Now as tablets led to handwriting and
then to thousands of computer fonts,
where seeking adventure becomes
short code for finding death and despair,
where sprites now dine on pixie sticks
and fairies no longer spread their dust,
where those who believe in magic are greatly
outnumbered by those who don’t,
where everyone’s top half exists
with their bottom self wandering about
and never finding each other,
where wizardry is replaced with technology-  
the common light bulb and automobile-
is when wonderment gets consigned to the
bottomless pit of foolishness.

Then magic waits in hidden castles,
patient not for those who have it
and don’t see it, but those who need
it the most and know that it reveals
the truth behind the disguises,
waiting for that old broken stead
to reveal that its Pegasus
and that spell they chanted
to lead them back home to
the magic of their parent’s’ embrace.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2024
When I look at the sky its blueness mixes
and cycles with thunder, lightning and rain.

I notice, the  vulture, content to feast on leftovers of once
beautiful things, fly  with the same majesty of the hawk.

At night, I see the stars burn bright and smell the rain’s petrichor snake off the worn sides of Racoon Mountain.

Yet, I the only thing that is neither sky, bird, mountain nor star,
wonder, spend so much time wondering, if this is peace or joy.
Jonathan Moya Jun 2020
I am scared, mommy
like I was in the summer storm
many months ago.
I tremble in my feet and hands
as I was in the deep puddle,
eyes open, screaming, shaking, mommy,
dark words want to come off my tongue.
Mommy, I am shaking as I come
down the stairs, light as a ghost.
Make me some milk, mommy
milk, if you see me there.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2024
My grandmother was my oracle,
speaking stained insights in a Spanish
I hardly understood at the time.  

My offerings were small but true:
kisses, hugs, “I love you” on paper scraps
translated by my mother for her knowing.

It was as if I had written them in blood and
it became a forever tattoo of her heart,  
a pumping cross, always giving and forgiving.

The yield was quarters, dimes, pennies
doled out from a repurposed wide-mouth
banderilla jar for the corner candy store tour.

She lived in a temple of rust seeping down walls, paint cracks, peeling checkerboard linoleum,
chipped ceramics, relics broken and glued back-

an unsanctified housing of brittle bones and
striations of hands and feet, sweet blood,
passed from thirteenth child to second son.

As my Spanish improved I was able to praise
the oracle with all the many spoken and
scribbled ways of Latin gratitude and adoration

under the watchful eye of my mother and
the care of twelve others who still lived
within the realm of her unwritten wisdom.  

When her vision stopped and her blood
no longer flowed she was relocated with
all solemnity to rest under a Boricua tree.

My mother doled out her oracular inheritance
whenever I stumbled, wandered, questioned,
encouraging me to write it all down.

Now, she is mere dust in the echoing wind
and I am a childless prophet who appreciates
all the oracles that came before my time.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
1.

The motherless-fatherless God
orphans the world in His own image,
His experience, His own elevated thoughts.

Yet He is unsatisfied, unhappy for
His creation is not perfect enough.

Even the little man with His breath-spark
is an unfulfilling design, in tun dissatisfied.
  
Everything has weight but
nothing has fullness.

Only the birds achieve effortless flight
and the planets spin easily in space.

2.

Creation shatters in the layers of night
and reforms in the weak rays of dawn.

The moon shows the scars of His longing
and the sun the flame of His abandonment.

In punishment He permanently
orphans the land from the sea
and the earth from the sky.

In scorn He lets His man creation
people the earth and die too soon,

the posthumous orphan left-behinds
of His own abandoned dreams.

His child cries out “Father!”
on his forsaken cross.  

Only the Romans sate
his thirst with vinegar.

He can not listen, only turn away
and resume creating and
spinning far better worlds.

3.

The orphans of God feel the fatal loss,
the doom of the abandoned earth,
and refuse to cringe or weep,

hoping the manner of their death
shall redeem their birth in His hope
even as they lurch toward the grave
Orpheus Listens to the Requiem of His Own Undoing  
                (after Leonard Kress)


Orpheus hears his songs played on broken strings,  
A dirge plucked soft by an old man with blight.  
He laughs at this fiasco, cringes as it rings,  
Echoes bending, whispering through trees at night.  

Behind him, nova bass lines swell and roll.  
He imagines the dancers weaving in a line,  
The wading birds now gone—silent in their toll,  
Their scattered iambs left to beachgoers’ time.  

He turns back—loses his time, theirs too.  
He pleads; time will not rewind for beggars.  
He cries; sorrow will not soften, nor undo.  
He sets his vision on a new career—foreteller.  

He fixes his fate, throwing his guitar,  
Its keys, its chords—all song surrendered to riptide’s pulse.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2022
They pass the plate between them

mother to daughter, father to son,
a communion stretching to forever

until the plates are full
and father and son retire to
the living room to watch the game.

The mother advises on the adornment’s
of the daughter, the father pats the son
for his stratagems of the future.

They have always been this way and the
singing cold coming from the window

only makes them closer to one another,
that thing they do to get through
this meal and the next and life.

How many solitary meals they had
together they can’t remember.

They know not what they have
given up, if they gave up anything,

only that the meal was solid and filling.
I wander through this secret city
mapped in the words we only know,
and we can only define.
I am the citizen of you
and you of me.

Everyone we know drives bye,
their cars filled
with everything we own
flying out the window.

The next vanishes
into the mist
beyond  the curb
of what we once were.
Or, is it, will be?

Where they went,
we know.
Where they’re going,
we know.

Our eyes and ears
want to follow,
it’s so bright and loud
and hard to hold inside,
even in all the shooting.
Jonathan Moya Oct 2019
“If you do not write or film”,
the director wonders,
”am I alive?”

“What limbo am I in
when the shooting stops?
When my camera no longer
holds the beautiful prism.”

His films stay the same,
only he changes,
exchanging the silver screen
for glistening tin foil
heated under with a match.

When his pain matches
the others, he prays.
When greater, he’s an atheist.

The films are his only company.
He lives with them and for them,
remembering the cinema of his youth
filled with the scents of ****
and jasmine and summer breezes;

remembering the cave
where he learned
to read the light,
understand its alphabet,
and eventually, vocabulary
with each discovered ray.

He smiles as the music track
of little angels being taught
by the local parish priest
to match his voice note
by note flickers in.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2020
I tried to bargain away all
the sickness and death
in my life  with the
skies and mountains.
They refused to disperse my
pain in the sunlight and clouds.
The void rejected my life,
eternity denied my love.
The moon stayed its silent course
watching my fate fade away in the night.
Time denied my burden.
The wind swirled to heaven
seeing me coming near.
The waters cascaded away
fearing my touch.
God was on vacation
and not due back until
two days after my passing.
My heart opened wide
and I emptied my pain
on its breakers and shore
until all that was left was words,
these words in the color of clarity.
Jonathan Moya May 2021
I should have broken my back by now
with my lupine spine,
feet screaming as if in a wolf trap.
My outrage prowls the low valley
searching the arid land for water
to slack the thirst,
the howl inside.
Once there was real silence
but no answer.
Now, rage is my lone truth.
The lamb has been eaten.
Nothing stays in my broken jaw.
What is caught just slips away.
The times are always lean
for those who howl alone.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
There is a certain satisfaction that comes
with shrinking language and imagination
to a rectangle, fitting black-and-white
words into a prescribed length and width
given human depth through inscription.

The filled sheet of paper almost
transcends its smoothness and thinness,
its very blank expression and dullness.
It reveals exactly what it is meant to say
and the colors one wants to see in it.

Move the imprinted strokes up and
it becomes the verisimilitude of art;  
move the line down and there exists  
scientific equations in plain view;
give it power- and it becomes money,
an official stamp- and it’s the recorder of
birth/death and everything in between.

All of it can drift away if unbounded and
catch fire with the right or wrong spark.
Jonathan Moya May 2022
If you accept the apple
you must accept the bite,
the lips that bit the flesh,
the legs that climbed the tree,
the eyes that looked and lusted
for what was in between and above
the white cleft rising in the speckled light,
all the crucifixes after and the rising flags since.
Jonathan Moya Oct 2019
Parasites: they insinuate themselves
into your head, your heart, your art

They exist in the schizophrenic zone:
the lower right corner of your painting
looking for patterns that go to childhood,
the well rehearsed gestures that
allow them to take over,
plant the image in your agitated brain
that makes you doubt your love,
sign over your entire identity,
make you think that they can ****
with a scrape of peach fuzz,
until everything smells, feels,
tastes exactly the same-
a collision of **** and water
that knows money and not art
is the iron that smoothes
out all those creases.

The concrete jungle is the exam.
Their goal is to dominate it.

You enter through the black portal
searching for the thing you lost
in the right corner a long time ago-
the thing you call son or daughter-
tapping out SOS with your forehead
on the button on the wall
that connects with the light outside
until it reads SON to that distant brain.

Whether you **** someone or betray
your country doesn’t matter.
It is just the thing you keep
hidden  in the basement
that doesn’t know  
that all it needs to escape
is to walk up the stairs.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
The sand holds our faces.
Every thousand grains
forms a man, a woman, a child.

Every millionth there is your mother-
young, stunning, beauty mark
perfectly spotted on right cheek.

Every billionth adds a little weight,
gray, tears and beaches of separation.

Every trillionth might be the dirt
blown away at her funeral.  

It’s not hard to find a thousand
coffins nesting in the shoreline.
You just need to adjust your eyes
to focus on the tiny-ness below,
to see every relative particle.  

Sand is but the erosion
of the once impenetrable.

You may find your father
coasts away from your mother,
his bald-headed frown
etched into a tableaux
of a thousand grains.

The semblance of
your sister’s smile
and your brother’s jeer
not embracing each other
are also there,
shifting closer
or farther away,
based on the whims
of tide and wind.

Your history has been
etched into the grains
centuries before your birth,
yet your fate remains beyond
their sway and maybe even time.

No  one can explain
why vast deserts exist.
Why their very ash
is forever tendered
and remembered.

All we know is that
the shifting sands
will be there to always
greet and bury us.
Jonathan Moya May 27
Passing Through


The city recedes, and in the dim hush of the bookshop, she stands—  
a shadow among shelves, folded inward,  
something bent in her shoulders, a shape recognized but unacknowledged.  

Once, she had said nothing but told everything—  
the stagger in her step, the new weight in her limbs,  
the way she lingered at the edge of the studio light,  
no longer the form he had wanted to capture.  

He watches now, tracing absences—  
the ***** of her shoulders once held tension, a poise  
that suggested movement even in stillness.  
Now she carries herself differently,  
the lines of her frame settling rather than waiting,  
her presence less an idea, more a fact.  

Once, she was all gold-lit angles,  
the right lines, the hush of reflected glow—  
a frequent hire, the form desired,  
an artifact of someone else’s vision.  

She had belonged to the eye before she had belonged to herself—  
posed into being by hands that never touched her,  
rendered in strokes that softened what was sharp,  
every detail adjusted to fit a world not her own.  
She had been borrowed from that illusion,  
but had never been made to stay.  

But too often seen, too often known,  
a form rehearsed until it dulled,  
the lines that once shimmered with possibility  
grew fixed, predictable.  
No longer his vision, only a presence—  
no longer his invocation, only a fact.  

Now she moves with a tired grace,  
her skin softer, edges blurred,  
a body gone through motherhood, through ruin, life—  
the exact silhouette that he will never sketch again.  

She does not see him watching.  
She does not recognize the shadow he has become.  
She steps out through one door. He chooses another.  
Two figures, moving apart,  
the way a vision unspools,  
the way a muse disappears.  

He does not linger, does not reconsider—  
what was once luminous has dimmed,  
what was once rare is now merely seen.  
Yet what is art if not the wreckage and the salvage—  
the ruin and the radiance, the lifted and the fallen,  
the flawed, the irredeemable and the redeemed?  

He will not ask. He will not answer.  
And so, what he creates will never hold her.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2019
Passion’s Cursive Highway

P
It starts with the line, an upwards curlicue,
the noose flapping rightwards in the wind,
at the top of the curl, an afterthought,
because every line needs a curve and a loop
to follow the road set to the next ones beginning,
less it turn in on itself, circle about,
or start and end nowhere.
a
The next road is not a road,
but an interchange, connected
curve flowing at the bottom,
arching outward to the top,
to half the height, straining
to touch the loop behind
and just above, falling
in an outward curve
that delivers the scribbled
start that is the highway
of their journey.
ss
Their highway starts in swagger,
they thinking it’s straight
but it really swerves and swerves,
she existing in the sedan
of soul and soothing blissful union,
he riding in the open convertible
the slapping wind of ***, sin
and self his indulgent mantra,
the rolling curves of the highway
unfolding, a striking rattlesnake
pushing them together in
a union of fear and death
stuck half in trust and mistrust.
i
They exit the highway their auto
in the fleeting traffic streaming by
an unnoticed sensible sedan, SUV,
minivan amidst the flashier styles
until a passing train forces a stop
at the gate till the arms clear
and the red lights stop flashing
and they can continue the little ways
to the incline street that halts
period, at the dead end that is their
garage and two story home.
o
Everyday they drive in and out
of the interchange that is
their two kids, two cars,
back and forth from shopping,
home, work, garage to garage,
other stories and two story house,
she practicing, and refining the
upward curve outward *****
that is her harmonious devotion
to perfecting the craft of family life,
he to the obsessive dedication of
work, promotion, goals, achievement.
n
At the up stroke, halfway to the end,
he crashed and she was there
to pick up the pieces and give him
her half of the inward flexing n,
loosening the noose to fly in the wind,
finally uniting their divided passions
into not a marriage but a union
that respected the middle ground
they had created with each other
and the true real love that was there.
Jonathan Moya May 13
I don’t worry how my old clothes  
will look on their new owners at Goodwill.  
They have places to be,  
stories to live  
beyond my closet.  

Still, letting go feels strange.  
I hesitated at the donation bin,  
fingers brushing fabric worn soft  
by years of routine.  
Shirts that carried me through long days,  
pants that held their shape  
even when I didn’t,  
sweaters that wrapped me in warmth  
when I needed comfort.  
Familiar, reliable—  
but clothes, like memories,  
aren’t meant to be hoarded.  

And maybe, I realize,  
I am ready to let them go—  
ready to make space  
for the person I am becoming,  
not just the one I have been.  

Now, my shirts might end up  
on a college kid,  
worn soft from late-night study sessions,  
coffee stains mapping out  
their ambitions.  

My pants could find a new home  
with a dad who needs extra pockets  
for snacks, keys, and crumpled receipts  
from weekends spent chasing his kids.  

A Dolphins t-shirt might land  
in the hands of someone  
who doesn’t even watch football,  
but wears it anyway  
because it fits just right—  
or because aqua and orange  
make them feel bold.  

Some pieces will travel far,  
stuffed into suitcases  
heading toward new cities,  
new jobs, new beginnings.  
Others will stay close,  
worn by someone  
who just needed  
a warm sweater on a cold night.  

I won’t know where they go,  
but I like to think they’ll be loved,  
threadbare in all the best ways,  
living new lives  
I’ll never see.  

And as I walk away,  
hands empty, closet lighter,  
I expect to feel loss—  
but instead, I feel space.  
Room for new stories,  
new routines,  
new warmth—  
not just in fabric,  
but in the quiet that remains.  

Maybe I’ll fill it with something new,  
or maybe I’ll leave it open,  
letting the quiet remind me  
that not everything needs replacing.  
That sometimes,  
emptiness is its own kind of comfort,  
a soft place to grow into something new.
Jonathan Moya Jan 2021
I.
All through elementary school
blonde beautiful lip reading teachers
would try to correct my “th”s by snaking
their tongues between their teeth and
holding it there, ripe cherries
tempting me to bite into them.

This was the one thing my withdrawn self
throbbing with the first thrusts of male
enthusiasm couldn’t stop thinking about—
all those thin throats with patchouli scents
wildly, willingly, whispering interdental fricatives
like a throng of French kisses to my thirsty lips.
I thoroughly desired the apples of their necks—
to chew them, **** them, swallow them,
eat them all -all of them- all of it,
every one so meaty-sweet and
erupting with wet dreams.

They would undress themselves,
my harem besides me on the river bank,
their white stomachs dewy and shivering,
the ribbiting Croquis behind the marsh
chanting to me to instruct these chicas
in the ch’s— chas,  cha-chas, chochas
of the Puerto Rican mating call
with no use for this, that, these, thems,
just the rich vowels of legs parting
telling them each where
ella es hermosa como la luna.
(She is beautiful as the moon.)

Once Senorita Lujuria brought to class
a persimmon plucked from her garden
ripe with the musky  smell
of what the girls thought was chocha
and the boys imagined was ***
that she sliced into two equal suns.  

Knowing that it wasn’t ripe or sweet
I refused the first bite she offered.
I watched the  others spit it out,
their palms full of bitter disappointment.


II.
When I got home my mother was cutting
off the crown of a pomegranate, scooping
out the core without disturbing the berries,
scoring just through the outer rind, until
it quartered and could be gently pulled apart.
I stuck out my hand and she inverted the skin
until the berries fell warmly filling my palm
and then into a red plate

Her body was a bruise, especially her hands
I gently rolled her wheelchair
to her cluttered room
where she sang an old Spanish song
asking for the ghosts to take her away.
Her song swelled and she cried it out of her
heavy with sadness and sweet with love.

After she had passed I stumbled upon
three scrolls tied with purple velvet string
folded under a down blanket in the basement.

I unrolled three paintings done by my mother
in the Frida Kahlo style.
  
The first was a self- portrait of her holding
a quartered pomegranate in one hand,
a sliced persimmon in the other.
The second was of her staring out at the ocean,
her body bulging with the idea
of my joyous conception.
The last, was an ****** tableau
of her and Senorita Lujuria
in a forbidden embrace, signed and
dated two years before I was born.

The first two painting had the deftness
of a thousand skilled repetitions,
the taboo one sprawled with arthritic loops
but still hathe talent of muscle memory.
My eyes teared with the knowledge that
my mother never lost the things she loved,
her son, the colors, scents and textures
of all the persimmons and pomegranates
so neatly sliced and lustily devoured.
Jonathan Moya Oct 2020
The piano player
has already been shot.
He is no longer a musician,
less one that sold-out halls.

Once he turned the river’s chant
into a jazz so fine that fish weeped.

Now, he plays only
right-handed counterpoint.
His left is still paralyzed,
even after a year of PT.

He only knows Bach,
the old bebop has faded.

His laugh,
a faint rhythmic sigh
is the only time
he knows how to keep.

He grows frustrated
when a two-handed Schubert
plays on the classic radio station.

He was acclaimed
for the way his music
triumphed over time and adversity:
the weakness of an inferior piano,
his own chronic fatigue, his very pain.

He would admonish those
who broke his concentration
with chronic picture taking
and excessive coughing.

He grunted whenever
he heard his imitators
in the elegies of Muzak
floating from the big mall speakers.

Now, his drummer and bassist
have died. He is alone.
His past brilliance is a cosmic taunt.

He realizes that he never
could have done any of this
without them
by his side,
keeping his time

The small, sleeping audience
of the nursing home
of which he is a resident
is not convinced of his genius.
He is no longer convinced of it.

He plays jazz in his dreams.
It’s as messed up as his left hand,
messed up as his waking life.
Jonathan Moya Aug 2020
Perfection can only be seen in the descent,
the glow of spotlights colliding to true whiteness,
the realization that grief touches the ground.

Mary, they say, you never experienced birth pains,
but the linen folded eternally beneath your son
shows that his final blessing transferred all  to you.  

Your tears wash his feet, and I imagine,
you wiping them dry with your hair,
a doting act of love he passed to his disciples.

Your grief remains in your soul.
Only the pain is collected in
the last descent of angels.

I feel the slow bump when
the descent must hit the earth,
the slight stumble to awkward reality.

I wash my feet everyday to honor
the perfect glory I’ve been blessed to see.

Note:
This is a memory of the 1964 World’s Fair where I saw the Pieta in the descent of an escalator. I was seven and  the experience lasted all of fifteen seconds, roughly the time it takes to read the poem.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
You worked hard for the plum,
to bite into the Mariposa
before the heat comes
and it rots.  

Its purple plumpness
pulsates with juice,
so dark and clear
through and through.

The comfort is not startling.
It’s the taste you know
from a thousand memories,

What takes you back
is the shock of seeing
your heart in your palm,
the taste of your blood rich
in this other thing.

Yes, it’s not what you hoped,
maybe more for such
a late summer surprise.

Yet, in the shrinking light you
don’t begrudge yourself
this small purple reward for
a lifetime of regrets and doubts,
unborn hopes and still-born pleasures.

This plum blossomed
despite you,
apart from you.

It reached you
skin sweating
ripe to be your miracle.

It’s not just sweet,
it’s sweetness,
full of the seasons
of its short life,
your everything- nothing joy.

Bite into it, and
you must bite into it,
taste its smallness
in your fullness.

Feel it run
down your cheek
overflowing your palm.

Feel it mesh with all
your runny happiness.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2019
Our marriage is old enough to vote now
and on this our porcelain anniversary
I vote “Yes, I do,”  over and over again.

A score of fine filigree plates I will gift us,
two broken to match the fragile times,
the eighteen days past the towers fall
when we married amidst grief and joy.

Our Noritake sacraments survives the bombings
of a blasted world, the cracking, fractures,
the buffing of our mistakes to a translucent
perfection, all frozen details rimmed with gold.

Cancer is etched on the lip, but so
is cure, joy, longevity, beauty, respect,
and the watermark underneath, our keepsake
forever, irreplaceable love.
Kristen is my second wife. We got married  eighteen days after 9-11, when the twin towers of the World Trade Center fell in a terrorist attack on September 11,  2001. Thus if you do the math of the second stanza you get one score. (20) minus two = 18. Eighteen days past 9/11 makes the date September 29, 2001.

  It is also our eighteenth anniversary.  The irony of that number in our lives today was too good to leave out of the  Poem.  

The typical gift for an 18th wedding anniversary is porcelain.  Thus China and Noritake reference.  

For those aware of history the Noritake factory was bombed and destroyed by Allied planes in WOrld War Two.  Only the China it produced survived the bombing. © 9 hours ago,
Jonathan Moya Feb 2020
I have to sew my memories
inside the lining of my coat
to keep them close but not inside,

something to take on and off
when cold grief needs warm reflection
or remembrances flash painfully bright,

when chemo and radiation
makes it difficult to feel my teeth,
tie my shoes, retrieve the hem of a future

through the barbed-wire fence of past life,
the cancer, the bad brother that shoves me
through, leaving me bloodied and betrayed

but safer in the ways of nothingness,
the death of my bawling infant self
that I just begin to fathom.

I lack the humility to pray for less,
just close my eyes and find kindness
for the coats I sew for others in the dark.
Jonathan Moya May 2022
A bicycle splashes
over a puddle
and its aura
reflects down
the streetlights
praying halos
on the umbrellas
of the pedestrians
that pass under.

Down the block
two stop signs
on opposite streets
both signal WALK,
letting the crisscross
of the quotidian begin.

This moment it’s
a blue umbrella
******* around
a red one.

Earlier a chihuahua
in a poncho sniffs
and wants to nip
at the English bulldog
wearing a Mac
in the pouring rain.
(Is it so strange.)

Hours later a woman
in a white dress
and black high heels
will struggle with
the designer handbag
slung on her left shoulder
and the Bergdof’s bag
grasped tight in her right.

The crossing mother
with the black stroller
sings a shushing lullaby,
hardly noticing
the little stumble.

Oh how,
The city releases
its spectacle of life
when it rains.
Jonathan Moya May 2019
The rain creates its own ballet
starting with a lone figure on a bridge
holding an umbrella in the fog
splashing teardrops with his feet,
doing jetes over the larger puddles,
until the wind inverts his shade,
plies turning to pirouettes,
approaches cascading to the portal
and the head of the street,
dancing to a cityscape beyond.

At the last turn they meet cute,
their outward canopies entangling
rib to rib, shadow to shadow,
a plastic bag covering hair and
half her face, soggy groceries
nursed to her chest, an oversized
purse dangling her wrist, pulling
her down, falling, wishing for
something, someone, anything
to stop the descent, the crash.

He catches her in perfect repose,
umbrellas twirling the pavement,
as he slowly lifts her to him just a
breath and heartbeat away,
their hands touching, a thousand
raindrops pulsing on and in them.

Her parasol dances away from her
over the edge into the swirl below,
his caught before flight is vigorously
shaken to form.  He stuffs fallen
apples and pears into the pockets
of his rain jacket.  She discreetly
stashes a box of tampons into
her coat’s hidden lining. The umbrella
is their only shelter as she holds
it over them while he carries her
in his arms to the nearest cover,
a bodega with a green awning.  

At the corner of the drizzling mist
a mother swaddles her boy
in the hems of her rain dress.
Unprotected singles cover
their heads with open hardcovers
or purchases clenched in plastic bags.
Couples step in unison huddled
under their vinyl domes.
It’s all a parade under black and white,
a synchronized rainbow of attitude,
adding  to the grand Romantic ballet
of bending, riding, stretching, gliding,
darting, jumping and turning to and fro.

The finale has the last drop crying
to the pavement, to the street,
washing the asphalt in its clarity,
a lachrymose river flowing down drains,
the mechanical traffic dispersing
the  rest in butterfly waves that
sends the ensemble to the edges,
leaving the coryphees alone, apart,
staring at each other in the evaporation,
waiting forlornly for the first trickle
to return and kiss their skin with joy.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2020
The rain chuckles on the rooftop
and the sound carry’s down the house.

The oaks in their amber raincoats
hiss in the water’s tickle.

Their sinuses suckle the drops to veins
then shiver off the excess.

The wild summer streams are
beginning their running joke.

The drought retreats with a frown
to the applause of the scorch grass.

The old man and his grandson watch
the slapstick of nature from the doorway.

They wave to their bemused neighbors
in their rockers watching the show.

The old man hands the child an umbrella
and watches him join the laughter all around.

The child delights in the rain drumming
smiles on the harlequin cloth.
Jonathan Moya Feb 2020
M
My ugly M: two lonely
crescent wings touching the sun,
an  Icarus mounting up,
than melting into the whirl;
the waterfall between mountains;
caterpillars kissing like
moths fluttering to the light.

OY
O- a strawberry, orange
just ripe for a thumb to squish;
a lasso, not a noose;
a good herd dog corralling
Y- to M to A; my tongue;
or the necktie that makes the
suit of my name, my place here.

A
A- the tadpole in the marsh,
the eye searching for the nose,
the hurricane kissing land,
the alpha inside the all,
acknowledging the end
is not the start, nor circle,
but the tail seeking the future.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2024
The pain is gone and
I am ready to write about
everything beyond the fear,

ready to bite into the
muscle and bone
of the world,

to put away the dagger phrase,
all the losses of my life,
ready to live in hope’s recesses.

I am poet enough to
make you taste
this hidden fruit,

see beyond all
the sutured sunsets
of existence.

It will not be all
kisses and music, but  
it will be terribly beautiful!
Things are going as planned.  
My mother died.  
My father died.  
I am alive
and bound to fate

I recite the mantra to myself:  
"A father is fate,"  
drawing the Harrow  
along my fetid soul,  
turning over what was planted in me,  
digging up the weight of his will.

But a counterchant arises,
the one I will use
as the border wall
against this seeding:
“A mother is the memory of mystery."
Her voice plants itself in the silence,  
a reseeding against the pull of his fate,
a defiance growing in the spaces he left behind.

Perhaps that is why my parents died the proper way,  
never knowing how the mystery  
of their three childless children’s lives  
would resolve itself.  
Perhaps they believed  
things left unresolved,  
questions left unanswered,  
were never meant to be—  
that silence itself was an inheritance.  

We were all improper boys in their eyes,
following their path—
but only far enough to leave the family herd behind.
I was the easy one,
the silent, observant child,  
the one who did not rebel,  
but carried no mystery or fate in him,
only the moral weight of a conflicting inheritance.

My father died in peace,
leaving no holes in his life,
not even a burial, just his ashes.
And his boys with all
the usual unresolved regrets,
the proper amount of moral pain
to grieve him properly.

My mother’s death was the pit
in the universe that opened up
a thirty year hell in her sons. She left a mess-
sickly, poor, and with nothing to grant
but her good memories and a moral clarity
torn to tatters by the unscrupulous.

The older took to drugs trying to give her justice.
The younger was too innocent of mind
to truly know and care.  And as far as myself,
the silent observant, middle one—

there are reasons
good mothers die
and poems are meant
to live forever—

there are reasons.
Jonathan Moya Jun 2020
There will be a time when God leaves you.
Maybe summer. Maybe winter.
The last thing he will say:
Keep searching.  Keep finding.
Seek me in the trash, the womb
lungs and heart.
He will leave you agape and stirring,
just a memory prayer
to say as the sun rises
and you wonder whether
winter or summer
has the holiest months.
Jonathan Moya Jan 2020
Remember the sky even though
it won’t remember you.

Know the constellations tales
even as they know not yours.

Remember the moon’s pull
despite its denying your shadow.

Remember the sun, the dawn even
as its novas your sight,
singes your memories
in forgetfulness, grief and time.

Remember the sunset,
that yields to night
that hardly embraces you.

Remember not your birth,
the maternal pains,
the gasps to your first breath,
the silent cursing of your first form.

Remember not your life’s mistakes,
your mother’s and hers.

Disperse them in the wind,
awaiting angels to hurl
them into the sun.

Remember not
your father’s indifference,
the times he chose
not to be a part of your life.

Remember the earth in all its colors
even as  it entombs everything.
that skins it.

Remember every plant, animal eaten;
the fallen tree that is your house frame
and every book you have read-

for their death and your life
is the child of every poem written
and consumed in the soul.

Remember the howl of the wind
in its indifference,
the universe’s deafness
that seems not to listen
or know you.

Remember that language,
your scream is the retort
to the universe’s grudge.

Shout “I remember”
even as it whispers
“I remember you not.”
Jonathan Moya Sep 2024
I am married to this earth,
this field, this silence,
even as the ocean offers itself.

I walk  it with my dog on his leash
pulling restlessly ahead,
biting at the frenzy scent trail
he knows exists in the air.

The woods beyond are gray.
So is the sky.  

I hear— the echo of
a  trickling brook.  
My dog, inhales—
the last traces of  
dying greens, the odors
of tantalizing blues yielding
to the coming season.

The horizon reels away
until my eyes can no longer
take it in and the sky matches
the coming night—
contains itself in the field,
in every thing.  

Drops of rain splash
and  fall off my nose
onto my tongue.
The taste is bittersweet.
The scent, silences  
my dog’s barking
with the promise of petrichor.

The hidden brook silently turning
breathes in the renourishment—
the earth, the field,
praise the distant blessing
of a dying Hurricane Debby
bequeathing its last bits
for this life.

In my *******,
I feel the grace
of an unseen promise.
In the walk back home,
I am aware that each
foot thud is full of mud—
the marriage of ocean and land.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2019
I watched my house recede to the invisible
as the water rises and the slow flat boat ferries me away.

My only baggage— the wife in her angels nightgown,
my chihuahua, a revolver loaded with dusty bullets—

all collapsing in the flow, dissolving into rot and mold,
a place not all that comfortable for other people,

a belligerent child evaporating into condemnation,
a concrete overhead blocking my view of heaven.

My archive of creeping shame sheds their existence
until it fits into the reality I see, no longer see.

I can only call this invisible place, this marred space
what it originally was before the water and erasure—

I called it love.
I call it love.
Jonathan Moya Sep 2020
The lavender skin river
whispered with a maiden’s call.

Bonnet curls kissed her banks
in a flush of forgiving tears
for the trawlers bruising
her mercy and calm,
each departing an oily scar
that dispersed in the flow,

for the water is never mean
this cold season
to those that whip her  
yet never scuttle in her embrace,
for she is an orphan
seeking the lost ocean’s reunion.

She wonders on rivery things,
the searching and sloshing swirl,
the geraniums, irises, lobelias
breaking off in purple sacrifice
to soothe her aching waters.

knowing that endless
Sunday baptisms have made her
sacred to those who
know only the dawn and twilight
of the sun above her
and the watery blessings
below that feed them.

The river flowers tickled her and
the laughter spread on her stream
and she knew what she meant
and what she meant to them.
She moved closely away
to the tiny hands in the grass
waving her goodbye
and the longer, bigger ones
welcoming the trawlers home.
Jonathan Moya Mar 19
My brother is an angler
devoted to the stream
that pools around long boots,
making the slow cast
that gently whips and
ripples the surface with
a reel that knows
the proper weight
of the scales below.

Gone are the days when
he fished Crandon Pier
while sitting on
an overturned paint bucket with
a cheap red and white bobber
and a cane pole,
competing with the gulls
for the punniest sea prize.

Now he fishes
the Rogue's eternal flow,
its waters murmuring unseen truths
far from shadowy gray terns’ jeers  
that steal his peace—
fishing in steadfast streams  
that let his boots
anchor him to
the quiet pulse of home.
Jonathan Moya Feb 2020
What keeps me holding onto my old self,
preventing me from casting it into past swells?

Something detested, adored, hymned too,
haunted, cancer ridden, inflamed, grieving

and torn- yet beloved, pulled forward
into an ocean of tomorrow and tomorrow’s

swimming to hope or drowning in hopelessness,
never knowing where my forgiveness exists

or where my identity will be marooned,
my crueler self will  beach

and be rescued or
die in the unlit sun.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2020
Soldiers patrol Bethlehem now.

The Kaaba hosts no
circumambulating mustati.

The Ganges’ bathes
in its own sin and ash  
releasing no Moksha.

The Vatican quarantines
even  its Cardinals as
The Pope holds mass
to an empty St. Peter’s Square.

In Chicago, a 7-year-old girl named Heaven,
will not die today, not become  
the most expensive candy in the world,
as her mother watches her, the miracle of today,
walk all alone by herself to a closed sweet shop.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2020
the
   devil
         put the
              warmth
                          down south
                                             so man
                can call it
Paradise.
Jonathan Moya Oct 2020
Rising from the watery mist the
grey sea church blesses the waves
and prays to the sky,
lonely, unadorned,
a silver carven wing,
folded in limbo,
as its sea bells peel out the
redemption of sand and stone.

Its three pillars  
drawn from sea’s breath
are stained aquamarine,
and on its grey stone altar,
embraced with God’s gentle love,
nestle the souls of sea birds
home at last from their long journey
and the hazards of ocean and sky.
Jonathan Moya May 25
Searching for Florecitas at the Supermercado

We walk, my brother and I, as the cool breath of night yields to the slow, sticky press of morning. Condado’s half-lit streets shimmer under retreating shadows, sidewalks smoothed by wealth, indifferent to our steps. Beach condos glow in the thinning dark, their balconies high as forgetting.  

Somewhere in this maze of Boricua pride of  polished storefronts, there is a supermercado. Somewhere beyond joggers in designer gear, behind terracotta houses older than the neighborhood’s ambition, is the candy our mother carried home. “florecitas”, sugar and memory pressed into a flowered shell.  

The hotel server had given simple directions—“izquierda, derecha, izquierda—left, right, left—and it would be there, waiting at the end of the street.” But in the air between us, the words blurred, my mind twisting Spanish into English. Derecha became left, izquierda became right, and the city rearranged itself under our misplaced steps.  

We moved forward, confident in error, passing high-fashion joggers and dogs bred for display. Past palm-lined streets, the world opened—not a supermercado, but the sea, stretching, oblivious.  

Tourist hotels framed us, their whitewashed facades reflecting the blank stares of wanderers who, like us, had no answers. We backtracked. Again, the city folded into the quiet wealth of Condado’s homes—white brick walls, gated walks—another dead end, another seawall holding back the morning tide.  

For a moment, we stood there, the heat thick now, pressing against us like the city was unwilling to yield. The ocean stretched wide, indifferent, erasing footprints before they could last. Condado did not welcome hesitation.  There was movement, commerce, and precision—but none for us.

I closed my eyes, searching for something in the lull between breath and heat. A memory surfaced—Morovis, my grandmother’s porch, the way the mountain mist rolled in at dusk, cooling the air before settling into silence, the scent of damp earth and slow conversation.

There, I would listen, swaying in my sun-faded hammock below, to my abuela chanting the rosary long after all her children had gone to sleep.  She was chanting in that squeaky rocker passed on to her like the house from her mother.  The rhythm was effortless as if she had always known how to move with the wind. In that place, Spanish was not a test, not an obstacle—it wrapped around me like something familiar, something inherited.  

But here, the air did not soften. The city did not cradle me like the mountains and old houses once had. The ocean did not care about misplaced words or lost directions.

We went back to the hotel, back to the start.

And there—was a man, his clothes worn by years, hair tangled in the wind, smoking a cigarette with the ease of someone who had lived too long to hurry. I asked for directions; my Spanish was frayed by childhood limits. He gestured—hands folding left, right, left—and I finally saw it. My mistake, my misplaced certainty.  

Knowing the way, even speaking the words correctly, didn’t make Condado mine. It never would.  

I let out a breath, the weight of it pressing into the thick, unmoving heat. The city had rearranged me, twisted the language in my mouth, and turned me inside out. Not by mistake—but by design.

Our walk deepens into the residential core of Condado, where the white brick houses stand uniform and impenetrable, their gates casting long shadows as the morning sun asserts itself. The sidewalks shrink with every block, narrowing from comfortable passage to tight corridors until finally, they are no more than thin strips of concrete—a gangplank hovering beside the street.  

We adjust our steps to fit the space, shoulders brushing against walls that do not give, the rough texture of aging plaster catching against my shirt. A gate swings open beside us, forcing me to step sideways. I press briefly against the wrought iron frame before slipping past, the cool metal leaving an imprint I can still feel as we continue forward.  

Here, the rhythm is different. The residents move alone, drifting toward the beach or peeling off toward the hotel district’s sleek restaurants. The streets bear Spanish names familiar yet distant, their syllables rolling off my tongue with a quiet recognition. They feel like names I should know deeply, but they sit on the edge of memory, just beyond reach.  

When we reach the supermercado, it is not the supermarket we see first—it is the high-rise tower looming above the parking lot, twenty stories of alternating terracotta hues, shifting from brown at its base to a soft gold at its peak. It is the only splash of color in this enclave, the only building that resists Condado’s strict homogeneity.  It stands like an Aztec temple without layers, the jutting balconies forming a jagged silhouette against the sky. It feels at odds with its surroundings yet completely absorbed into them, a contradiction standing quietly in place.

Then there is the supermercado itself, a sprawling gray box whose presence is neither defiant nor inviting but simply inevitable. There is no sign of charm, no gesture toward the past, just a square of necessity, unmoved by its location.  

We enter through the community side, the entrance facing away from the four-lane highway and its cold symmetry of traffic signals, away from the city's flow. This side of the supermarket is quieter and more resigned. The glass doors slide open, spilling out a rush of cool air, stopping our breath for a beat before we step through. The chill clings to our skin, but the heat lingers in our clothes, a presence that does not easily leave.  

Inside, the silence follows—a muffled quiet that absorbs the outside world, swallowing the hum of the street, the weight of the sun, the narrowing paths that brought us here.  

For a brief moment, I hesitate. The cold air presses against my skin, a sharp contrast to the warmth still clinging to my clothes. A shiver runs through me—not from the temperature, but from the sudden shift, the feeling of having stepped into something weightless and sterile.  Overhead, fluorescent lights buzz in a steady, electric rhythm, filling the space with a sound too mechanical to belong to anyone.  

Somewhere beyond the produce section, I hear Spanish murmuring between aisles—soft, familiar—but distant, threading through the air like something overheard rather than shared. A voice rises for a moment, just long enough to catch the shape of a phrase my mother used to say before it fades again into the hum of the supermarket.

I almost turn and reach it—but then it’s gone, swallowed by the fluorescent hum, leaving nothing behind. My fingers tighten around the edge of the shopping basket, the plastic pressing into my palm, grounding me in a place that still does not quite fit.

The supermarket is big and clean— almost too familiar, reminiscent of the Publix back home. Yet, despite the bright, polished aisles, there’s an odd sense of displacement. The products look the same, but the Spanish labels create just enough distance to remind me I’m somewhere else, somewhere I don’t quite belong.  

We wander the aisles. I scan the packaging, piecing together meaning as best I can— able to read more than I can speak or understand. My brother moves with ease, picking up local versions of pork rinds, sugar cookies, a guava drink.

The florecitas aren’t where I expect them to be, lost beyond my certainty. I ask a young woman who is stocking the produce aisle. She tilts her head, confused, then shrugs. She’s never heard of them. Maybe they go by another name.
She calls someone over her store intercom, her voice rising into the blank air of fluorescent light. A response crackles through—the florecitas are in aisle seven.

We head there, weaving through more aisles, past displays of packaged comforts and near-familiarities. When I finally find them, they sit low on the shelf, their orange tins big enough to see yet easy enough to overlook. I lift one, rattling it gently, hoping for a scent—but nothing escapes. Still solid in my hands, their presence here is proof: they exist beyond memory.  

For a moment, I debated taking two tins, wondering if they might be seized on the cruise ship the next day. But they should be safe if they are unopened and in their original packaging. Still, my luggage wouldn’t hold two, and the thought of losing them before I could eat them on the open water kept me from taking the risk.  

At the checkout, I pick up pastries for my wife. Guava is a safe choice, something familiar amidst the rows of unknown fruit fillings, flavors popular here but nowhere in my personal history.  

My brother says he wants to treat us, pulling out his ATM card—his Social Security disability account, which I oversee as his representative payee. The cashier, a short, older woman with the quiet authority of someone who has worked here her whole life, scans the items efficiently, without pause.  

I punch in the PIN—numbers for Richard Petty and Jeff Gordon, my brother’s favorite racers. Declined. I tried again, but this time, his birthday was declined.
  
The cashier exhales, mimicking how to slide the card through the reader. The line behind us grows restless, shifting in collective impatience. I asked if I could switch to credit, but I can’t back out of the transaction.  

My brother watches, unbothered, chewing the edge of his thumbnail, waiting for me to solve the problem like I always do. I take out my special Amex—a business card with upper-level privileges—but the cashier isn’t impressed. The line thickens, voices rising slightly in volume, a growing murmur of frustration, disinterest, and waiting.  

I swipe. It goes through like it always does.
  
The tension dissolves as the receipt prints, the final proof of purchase—a transaction completed, a process endured, a place navigated but never truly entered.  

We step outside, my brother carrying the bag. The streets are more familiar now, and the walk back is half as long. I want nothing more than to return to the hotel, hand my wife the pastries, and wash away the grime and quiet shame in the shower. To rest, let exhaustion overtake frustration, and turn my focus forward—toward the cruise, toward the day at sea where I could eat the florecitas without hesitation, without misplaced expectation.  

As we move through the streets, Condado feels smaller. Not because I understand it better but because I no longer need to.
---
Jonathan Moya Jan 2020
I want to greet the new year
with 20/20 eyes,
knowing that cure dances
on the edge of hope’s grave
and that in this biblical year
of flood, cancer and death
that grief is just a
short term companion.

Tomorrow time
will step me away,
leaving only memory
and the long walk
to the horizon.
Jonathan Moya Jul 2020
Her name you may
or may not recall.
It was Chrissie,
the body in the sand dune.

You do remember the shark,
the blood on the water,
death spreading like
a virus in the town of Amity.

You do remember that
the beaches should have been closed
but Amity was a summer town
that lived on summer dollars.

You do remember the shark
doing what it was built to do—
killing Mrs. Kintner’s little boy
on that beautiful July 4th day.

You do remember Mrs. Kintner’s
cold blooded slap
on police chief Brody’s
warm blooded face.

“You knew there was a shark out there.
You knew it was dangerous
but you let people go swimming anyway.
You knew all those things

-BUT STILL MY BOY IS DEAD NOW!”

“She’s wrong,”
the mayor says.
“No, she’s not,”
Chief Brody acknowledges.

Suddenly you remember
reading a news piece
that Mrs. Kintner (Lee Fiero)
was a victim of the pandemic.

You realize there is no
police chief, scientist, grizzled old salt
banding together to do the right thing,
uniting to triumph over disease, death,

Only the orange hair President
standing deep in the drowning tide
smiling and waving and
telling everyone the water is fine.

“We are all Mrs. Kintner  now.”


Note:

The final line is a quote by Mary McNamara,
the obituary writer for the Los Angeles Times.
Jonathan Moya Mar 2020
I don’t know if SEE ROCK CITY is
still stenciled in white on black
on old red barns along dusty Southern highways.  

The old black and white photos weren't arrows, more like anchored arks that floated  menageries of tourists to Lookout Mountain
to see miniature Fairy Tale Caverns,
villages of Mother Goose creatures,  
a Lover’s Leap with a view that overlooked
the borders of seven states on a clear day.

Hidden inside  was a falls that turned red, green, black, orange and holiday colors
on Valentine’s, St. Patrick’s, Halloween and Thanksgiving and Christmas.    

The last two miles were a treacherous thrill ride
up a snaking two lane mountain highway
filled with all the breathless ascent of a rollercoaster ready to be propelled at its zenith.

The tourist coming down, amped up on
on sugarcoated dreams, soda pop,
rainbow squirts and homemade fudge
dissolving like cotton candy in their mouths,
would dare the descent without a  
tap of the brakes, making it the only place
on earth where heaven could collide with hell.  
  
I’m sure those old barns have rotted down,
filling their fields in creosote abandonment.  
Perhaps the whitewash of time has eroded
ROCK and even CITY leaving the passing soul
wondering what there is left to SEE.

The dream still exists amidst fairy tale caverns and meandering limestone/sandstone trails
on the very top of Lookout Mountain
waiting for a family of woodpeckers
to roost in the metal SEE ROCK CITY
birdhouse hooked to the V of my old oak.
Jonathan Moya Feb 2021
I walk from there to there
to paint myself into black pixels,
my shadow following obediently
part of the hobbled sketch.

I draw myself
as a wobbly line,
ill aligned and always
misplaced near the horizon

Above are scrawled illegible words
written in a shaky handwriting,
below exists the gurgle of my bowels
that my imperfect ears can only hear.

I ponder my broken perfection
and hear Jesus whisper his love,
knowing not the direction
from which he speaks to me.
Jonathan Moya Jan 2021
The sentinels stand silently
guarding the monuments
from rioting against their shadows.
One guard
counts the sunshine,
the other the dark.
The **** and ****,
the broken glass
can never be really
cleaned up.
The stench
just follows the tour
through the
purple velvet queue.
The glass bleeds
the feet of those
who sold their shoes
for nothing.
Jonathan Moya May 2022
at what point do shadows become
numbers and numbers become dust

is it when sunlight and moonlight cross
the eye into our anatomical darkness

when the zero circle helixes into short
existence a rose, a cell, a dying memory

when raindrops no longer liquefaction,
leaving umbrellas a meaningless prop

or the grid that passes over unnoticed
during the slow, long ride to the hospital

maybe, the strobe of light that moves
from office cubicle to office cubicle

possibly the shadows that dance while
you clean precisely calibrated glasses

try to focus on those rain smeared
figures now in your field of view

remembering they once were you on
the half lit steps staring into the dark

watching the three triangle flapping
of the crow over the tarmac
Jonathan Moya Mar 2020
She is the way they left her:
silent, shuttered, composed
amidst disarray,
the waiting chair unmoved,
her body draped in final coverings,
spider rays webbing the room,
the overhead light unused,
the bed sagging forever
in the center after this,
the sun fighting
with the weight of shadows
on her bedspread.
The corners of her room are dusty
crying from the lack of human nicety.
A tattered pain lives in the motes
that float to the floor,
bruises
of the past
that cannot heal in the present.
My hands are cut by the sharp edges
of a future I’m blind and deaf too.
I can only grasp futilely as the sun floats
away in the shadow play.
A faint trace of her voice
saying Jon, Jon, Jon
follows me out as I
struggle to lock the door.
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