BIO
Anuel Rodriguez is a Mexican-American poet living in the San Francisco Bay Area. He grew up reading comic books and listening to hip-hop. His poetry has appeared in Glass: Poets Resist and The Road Not Taken.
I didn’t know that blue was my favorite sound
until I was already a grown man.
Blue was the color of my neighborhood’s enemies.
But they were only ghosts dressed
in the same brown skins as us.
The graffiti growing on fences and walls
lacked blue like cave paintings
from two thousand years ago.
I once tried to make my own blue paint
out of water, river stones,
and broken car window glass.
Blue was the sound of peacock cries
refracting at the edges of my mind.
A few times I collected their feathers
and ground them up, but there was
no blue in what was left behind.
Blue was the sound of blood.
Blue was the color of death in our lungs.
On summer days, I would extract blue
from the azure sky until it became
white and colorless to me.
At night, roaming men with pistols
would shoot into that black transparency
until it was riddled with bullets
that would fall back to Earth like space capsules.
Blue was the sound of trauma.
Blue was the color of the wet-stained dreams
we let hang out to dry under the bone-white sun.
We fought our enemies until the word blue
no longer existed and neither did we.
My Father Isn’t Logan
My father told me he always wanted
to build a grandfather clock to put at the end
of the hallway with carpet that is the same
color as faded blue sky. He said he'd scavenge
for the pendulum and clock parts at local flea markets,
antique shows, and swap meets. It feels like a cluster
of memories I carry that was never breathed to life.
I can see myself as a young boy helping him
build his grandfather clock in his image.
Now his hair is graying and I feel like if I blink,
it’ll turn white like his father’s. His body doesn't heal
as rapidly as it once did. He spends hours in his
garage workshop putting his idle hands to use.
Maybe what he really wants to build is a time machine
to rewind the days back to before my mother’s
rheumatoid arthritis turned her bones into glass.
Back to before her cries echoed through the home
he built for us. Back to before her disease took away
the unformed dreams of my siblings. Someone once
told me that our parents are supposed to be our superheroes.
In that case, maybe it's the metal poisoning my father.
I never asked him if it hurts every time his
retractable claws come out. One day they'll probably
turn into bone. For now, I’ll fold my fears in silence
and watch the pendulum inside his chest swing towards
the future light of his ticking heart. I hope he does
build his grandfather clock someday. And I hope
I'm there to help build it with him. Maybe I’ll ask him
if he ever feels like me. Maybe then I'll feel less like
an adult only child with homesick skin
—a melted clock dripping over the edge of itself—
a detonation waiting to catch up to its fragments.