Lucky Coin

reaching my hand across to dennis
I notice books he has been hiding from me
but cannot imagine giving up
a coca-cola on his dresser, a lucky coin
the way he speaks to me
when we are writing or when he asks
for advice on his lesson plans
it is the polar opposite of face blindness
when I have sweat coming down my ears
it is a sign I am getting better 
at seeing my lion’s image in a cloud
I depend very little on friendships but need them
nobody asks a whale the difference
between itself and the ice caps

On Moss

these realizations I keep having
as I get older are becoming tiring
as they consistently remind me
of my poor shape 
the subtle lilt in your speech
wood and felt slammed against timpani
in the park at night I whisper
an awful prophecy
I might die in the dark
I might feed a pigeon
regardless of who becomes 
accustomed to this process
to these communications
and memorandums on fretting
I must preserve the mental image
of moss and the moss itself
the sound of water trickling past a stone
I am just so mad at you

Alliance

it’s in painting
that I solidify
my alliance
to research

the vibration
in my sternum
on singing a tritone
for salamanders

do any of you draw conclusions
when you walk on my hands
is it so easy to distinguish
between an hour and an idea
are all my thoughts repulsive

I find in trust a magnet
to draw all the awe in
look fast to my left
at a crying blond
maybe for joy

the belly is a shrine

become the sail or its wind

Attachment and Ambivalence

Wander with me, between water and water,
as a program we use to gently suggest a set
of ramifications, two isolated owls, for the actions
that led to this, to you sitting beside me,
and you will cease to wince at every mention of the name.

The leaf, cutting the sky from the sky, at least for a moment,
implies ambivalence drowned in light. A particle
of an unknown element, which travels a breath between us,
and strikes fear into a mother’s heart; it is not just
some fairy dust, not just the silent operations of aliens.

I never made light of difference, I reduced it to lawns
moving slowly, the syrup the animals wade through,
the dialogue of two agents in disagreement. Forecasting
by waving my wand over a pile of my bones, I say a picture
is like a portrait, and that in some way I will get my mulligan.

As a little courtesy, don’t say you need me, pare the rind
off of that starfruit, find an upside in calculus. Get cold
in the space between your freckles; look out the window.
If I am right to guess, you already know what I am going to say next,
and you know it is the perfect compliment.  

[untitled]

In news about salmon and fire season
and how close we are to having
little food and too much light
combing the ocean floor,
one might hear a rattling
soda can there, the tune of Moonlight 
Sonata sped up terribly

Gabriel Ojeda-Sagué is a poet and writer living in Chicago. He is the author of three books of poetry, including most recently Losing Miami (The Accomplices, 2019) which was nominated for the Lambda Literary Award in Gay Poetry. His fourth poetry book, Madness, is forthcoming from Nightboat Books. He is also the co-editor of a book of selected sketches by the artist Gustavo Ojeda, out from Soberscove Press in 2020. He is currently a PhD student in English at the University of Chicago where he works in the study of sexuality.