Jeff William Acosta

Open this and not the oranges lying

on the table but here where I put dead

things in my mouth beside my teeth

is a casket, as it loses its wooden frame,

first, is the black paint, then the ants that fed

on a dead butterfly, body tucked

like a crown upside down to save

whatever is left in the flesh. Or was it honey?

It doesn’t matter. Tonight, say savory.

Carlo Rossi. Rice cake. San Miguel. Swallowing

the tongue like an ocean to a sunken ship

before it can ever speak

on the waters and thrust it deeper: the excess

stomach fluids and let it envy the mouth.

Eventually, it will eat away the bullets

we held in our hands and mistook

for grains, or was it for thirst and nothing less

than toxins spreading in the body like a river?

for it will just keep flowing and take

what it cannot keep in my throat.

This knife, which was once a fishbone

—a concealment, or rather a sharpening

of the tongue. And not the ones my father fed

when I saw him cry his last

in silence, where he knelt, and begged their names

out loud, and although I was too far, I could tell

by the way his mouth opened and drowned

out by the rain, crippled my ears

of what I could never bear. Their fangs, sharpened

like how a knife becomes one

by cutting between tomatoes in jars, thymes

and rosemary against the back of an unclean

chopping board. Say Halleluiah. Say Amen.

Say yes. Say yes but you wouldn’t, would you?

be here? Inside our rented home, I peeked,

in the keyhole, and not because I wanted the rain

over my bare shoulders, but what comes after

my sister’s prayer as she grabs the ends

of my shirt, putting her tiny hands on mine, firmly

with her eyes, flickering, sea-black tinted circles

that mirror mine but like dewdrops under

the morning stars and I do not understand, how

could I ever say I am not heard?

How else could I get such blessings?