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.