Amiel Katz

BAPTISM

somehow the night sky
          feels like cada cual rose or
tiger blanket my family owns

the rigid stitching on its labored edges
          are a border for the liquid body
we become as we sleep—
          murky redness insisting que queremos
mixed with salt blue sweat
          slipping down from traumatic dreams

i’m a droplet within that liquid

una parte de un todo
          es como que si god were drinking it
i wouldn’t know if he’d find me
          no one could
except for your soft saliva

like baby
          soak me in your tastebuds
they know my purple salvation just like
          how your mind knows the bruises
when the gods found out i was gay

the darkness above, sunken in memories,
          is suffocating—
such woolen foolishness that covers me
          i still stupidly think
i can be hugged by a godly universe
          that summons our community back home

yet, in my solitude,
          i am still wet
like the cloth
          hanging off the backs
of the others

LA BESTIA IS A NEW MOTHERLAND

listen,
           hhiissssss.....
i’m preparing for the next freight
don’t ask me how i am though
all i did was manifest someone like me
making it with someone like you

la lluvia is making the metal slick
pero yo sé que the ground is not thirsty
           it’s the war machine
with dirty water in its throat
wanting to wash down our roots

we were once a grounded nation
unafraid of feeling small
now, all we do is peer inside ourselves
finding nothing but dead spirits
oh, how we mistake their death
as something we couldn’t stop
as something we didn’t do
                    oh, salvador
it was in you all along

           listen,
hhhiissssss....
our blood will not soak this earth
because baby, you taught me
how to make a fist and
scream back at the wrong in this world
so here’s what’s going to happen
i’ll unfurl my fingers
interlace them with yours
when the timing is right
i’ll scream once more
before we jump

Amiel Katz (she/her) is a queer poet and historian from Houston, Texas. Her work is rooted in lived experience and archival research to (re)imagine just futures. She has been supported by Macondo, Abode Press, and McCormack Writing Center. You can find Amiel’s work in Bat City Review, Horizon Review, and Gather Magazine.

Banner Art:
Luba Krejci, Morpheus (God of Dreaming), 1979, Linen, lacis construction, The Art Institute of Chicago

Back
Next