Michael Torres
I’ve written this poem before. I left Miguel here last
time, sitting in the front row of the church, near
the aisle. He must be asleep by now, his head against
the end of a pew. Maybe he’s dreaming of us alive
and young, walking into an AM/PM. He used to
grab two burgers from the food warmer, slip one
into the bag of another burger. I was a great
lookout. If he went up the aisle with the candy
and grabbed a pack of Twizzlers I knew he was
ready to go. If he took a cup and filled it with Icee,
I had to ask the cashier for a key to the bathroom.
If he ran, I ran, and I’d go left toward the field
past factories. He went right, cut thru the lot of that
church for ex-gang members who every other Sunday
asked God to look upon them again. It must be
the morning after my funeral, Miguel waking up
to his sore feet in those black dress shoes. His tie
loosened. Everyone else gone or never arrived.
*
After death, when it’s just me
with my slick soul, my see-thru
self, I imagine my eyes as two
brown balloons tied together that
a child has let slip from her fingers
and now must watch as they lift
further into a sky she could not have
imagined going on for so long. All that
blue, and I am only the balloons
no one believes in. I am barely out
of sight, looking back down at earth
one last time, watching the town where
I grew up and decided to leave when
I’d felt it shrink around me. I didn’t want
to say it like that, but that’s how it happens
sometimes. The same town I wanted,
nevertheless, to be buried in, I realized
when I was maybe sixteen, standing
in the cemetery for a funeral, burying
a friend of a friend, who did not end up
like his father, though his father was
there, handcuffed and dressed in orange.
His jumpsuit stinging the morning. An officer
at each side. I’d kept that image with me,
of the father, all my life, and would
wonder, from time to time, why the police
had not let him wear a suit to the burial.
I came to the conclusion that they could not
recognize him as a father. They found every
other word to define him. They fit those
handcuffs and felt good about their work.
The rest of the mourners had the freedom
of multiplicity. That morning, everyone’s words
tangled in a rain not so different from the storm
*
I once picked up Miguel in. He was still in love
with a woman who didn’t know what she wanted
except some time to think. It was a Saturday
afternoon when I found him walking in the rain.
Would you even call it afternoon, in a storm
like that? He said thanks after shutting the door.
Maybe both of us laughed for no reason
other than to start conversation, though neither
of us brought up what had happened. I’m a good
lookout. I can say that about myself. I drove on
and he put his face in his hands. I said nothing.
He wore a baseball cap. Deep blue. The radio was
playing low a commercial where someone didn’t
have auto insurance, and their friend asked them
why not. It’s a dumb thing to remember now, but
I can’t separate it from that moment. The wipers kept
smearing the glass. The rain returned. Again. I pressed
the gas and tried to catch up with the hour. I heard his
belt buckle click into place after a moment.
Michael Torres was born and brought up in Pomona, California where he spent his adolescence as a graffiti artist. His debut collection of poems, An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020) was selected by Raquel Salas Rivera for the National Poetry Series and named one of NPR’s Best Books of 2020. His honors include awards and support from the National Endowment for the Arts, the McKnight Foundation, the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, CantoMundo, VONA Voices, the Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, the Camargo Foundation, and the Loft Literary Center. Currently he’s an Assistant Professor in the MFA program at Minnesota State University, Mankato, and a teaching artist with the Minnesota Prison Writing Workshop. Visit him at: michaeltorreswriter.com
