Our Daily Becoming
after Adam Clay
Like the same Mayagüez
rock my grandfather moves
from one side of his house
to the other, it should be easier
to distinguish inhales between
exhales, the hands that rebuild
his mother’s house, quenepas
spawning overnight life in green.
In these moments of living,
proof of flesh serves as a halo,
the shape of the cheapest bean
that feeds our daily becoming.
It should be easier to define
one’s path to the winning
lottery ticket, but dreams at
his feet only reflect the chasing
of beads around the rosary.
Eventually, he stops running
even if he misses it. O, how it
felt like flying he says. How he
now flaps his fingers filled with
nourishing fruit while respecting
the movement of rocks. Despite
that he says, finalmente, los
pichones le robarán el aire,
he will continue to respect
grass in his yard as the blades
always reach towards the sun.
Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto-Vegan educator, writer, artist, and community organizer from Newark, New Jersey. He is the recipient of the SLICE Magazine’s 2017 Bridging the Gap Award for Emerging Poets and a finalist for the Arcturus Poetry Prize by the Chicago Review of Books. Dimitri is a candidate in the Rutgers- Newark MFA program and his poetry is published or forthcoming in Acentos Review, Anomaly, Hawai’i Review, Kweli, and others.
