Banquet with Copper & Rust – Aldo Amparán

I push two pennies
Into the slit of your eyelids

For the ferryman
I’ve been trying to let go

Of you tying a knot
To my gullet

To remember you
Without shedding— we eat

Hot porcelain in shards
Pick the splinters off

Our teeth with silverware
Our mother chokes

On coins & rust
Varnishes her vocal cords

I speak to her about my future
children their recurring dream

About the orchard
Where each tree sports

A hanging: a dream
Knitted from the past

Or the near future
What history

Unchanged—
I don’t want Death

to hang His shadow
Over my children:

But Brother what stories
Can I tell them of you?

Aldo Amparán is a queer poet from the sister cities of El Paso, TX, and Ciudad Juárez, CHIH, MX. He is a CantoMundo Fellow & finalist for the Alice James Award. His work appears in, or is forthcoming from Black Warrior Review, Gulf Coast, The Journal, Kenyon Review Online, Washington Square Review and elsewhere.