BIO
Henry Mills was born in DC to a Salvadoran mother and a Jewish-American father. His work has appeared in Origins Journal, The Wandering Song and Border Crossing. He received an MFA in poetry from New York University.
Cold Blooded
Santa Ana 1985
They say phosphorus
devoured all but her mother’s womb,
that she first opened her eyes—
pupils, like slivered almonds,
peering out from between the burnt ribs.
Very quickly she learned
to scale the tamarind tree.
It seemed she thought herself garrobo,
the way she’d stare over treetops
perhaps seeing what reptiles see:
not the chopper itself,
mosquito-small against Izalco
but its closing distance
registered as a blue more blue
than human eyes
perceive.
Nesting Dolls
When Ana returned
she had to roll her mother
off her daughter
and her daughter
off her doll. Years later,
in the jungle,
she showed compañeros
how to stuff animals
with explosives
and sew them shut.
An army truck
would idle—convoy
blocked by the hog
lying in the road,
attracting
flies.
Why The Pious Won’t Date Me
I’ve never met God but know my mother has,
for one of his names is Hunger, and He has dull teeth.
When I tell the woman who sits across my lap,
God is as real as the food my mother chewed the day she ate fog,
deals off. I thought you were Jewish, she said.
I thought I had something to work with.
Listen, I was once a child of God, eavesdropping
on the stomach through a thin wall.
He was going on about what He always goes on about.
More. More, He said. And so I ate more through a cord
until the wall, stretched taut around me, gave.