Amanda Chiado

It was a super bloom spring & the yellow butterflies
were flying into speeding traffic. Charlie was
looking at his phone, a text from his boy Troy,
who always knows where the party’s at, “Downtown
at Clifton Park,” Charlie woofed out. “Oh, yeah!”
I was trying to Snapchat the mustard flowers, wild poppies—
Yet, the world smashed dark & echoes of metal
Folded into swans, flew through my head. I was
wearing new lipstick, a rusty red. I’d just shaved my legs.
It was a Saturday, the second week in May. The river
was throwing itself across the earth, trying to baptize
the Trump Era. Even the fish were getting shoved
tail-first down and over the rocky pathway to nowhere.
I tasted blood, drank the river in big gulps. I shook Charlie,
but his face had no face and he hung like a meat-pile
from the seatbelt. Water rushed into the windows, happy
to fill space. I didn’t die. That is the hard part. I stare at Charlie
in a tuxedo casket, wearing his prom clothes that still smell
like cigarettes. I hold my breath behind my patchwork face.

JDP’s own AMANDA CHIADO is a writer, teacher and arts advocate. She is the Director of Arts Education for the San Benito County Arts Council and is an active California Poet in the Schools. Her chapbook Vitiligod: The Ascension of Michael Jackson was published by Dancing Girl Press in 2016. She won the Molotov Cocktail Shadow Poetry Award in 2016 and again in 2019.

Amanda Chiado

Circus Flies

are most interested
in our dares.
A bare bone horse,
the starved city,
he and I
blind to the drop.
Cool wind
of oblivion
wire waiting,
dash the love line.
Before the flies welcome
the shatter they gather
where we’ll crash.
We see
their hallelujah,
swarm.
All our bodily confetti
prepares to bloom, blood
on parade.
We tiptoe on,
wind our reckless halo,
flies buzzing
succulent hymns.

Choosing Thieves

The dare begins in the dark at the gate of the farm
where the slightest move may jostle the rooster into doodle-dos.
Boys grunt and shove, doing what they do best. Upon the mud,
the pink pig’s tracks dug like suicidal slices for attention.
Being the only girl is like swimming upstream, watching the faces
of the crowd slide by raucous in their downpour.
Of course I must have thought, thought something useful:
someone will get hurt. Be careful. Make smart choices.
My hands told of my heart, shimmying and damp.
My heart told of my guts, bubbling and unsure,
but girls go into the dark night after night, fraying the deep.
My feet whispered mouse, tip-toed through shadow’s throat.
In my arms like an armful of bony snow, I gathered the leggy
goat that bleated, and tore its eyes at me in worry.
A dream is like this, spontaneous abduction into a stranger’s arms.
I dashed with my animal, swooshing through the darkened field
like a torrent of teenage war. My breath stuttered, like an engine hum,
Warm under my back like when I first kissed the body kiss.
The men took the confused animal, slapped me on the back
in masculine regard. You did it, they whispered cheerfully.
I was breathlessly accomplished until the soft eyelashes
of the goat amended the light and she looked into me,
all questionable fate. She was choosing one thief over the next.

AMANDA CHIADO is still chasing those fancy sleep demons. Her poems keep sprouting up, like delicious little weeds. Her other work is forthcoming or appears in places like Cimarron Review, Casserole, Best New Poets, Fence, and Forklift, Ohio. She works for your golden smile, your tender hello and does it while chasing a baby!

Amanda Chiado

I pledge allegiance to the war
against the United Faces of Adulthood.
My hand is on my Juicy Fruit,
pocket full of rubber band bullets,
body equal parts blood, courage
and Crush, orange soda.

And to the parents who know
no better, fed by their curiosity
for button up shirts. For which I stand?
I’m not sure, but I stand and curse
for the very first time. Damn.

I fight for the banana seat on my bike,
for the freedom in Bazooka comics.
I fight for my tree house with the sign:
          No Boys Allowed.

Don’t you tell a soul.
That hole in the ground,
dug in the deep wet of my backyard
to the left of my swing set —
It holds my secret coffee can,
my quiet, collected liberty.

You pinky swear, I tell you,
or they’ll find us, and beat us
with leather belts in the name of justice,
and they’ll make us
grow up.

AMANDA CHIADO is an MFA graduate of California College of the Arts. Her work is forthcoming or appears in Witness, Sweet, Forklift, Ohio, Best New Poets, Fence, Cranky, Eleven Eleven and others. She currently works as the Program Coordinator for the San Benito County Arts Council and she is also an active California Poet in the Schools.