BIO
Alejandro Pérez is a student at Columbia University in New York. His poems have appeared in Star 82 Review, Gravel, HEArt Online, Literary Orphans, SOMOS Latinx Literary Magazine, Letralia Tierra de Letras and elsewhere. His chapbook Maybe the Trumpet is Human was chosen as a winner of the Boston Uncommon Chapbook Series. Being half American and half Guatemalan, he is caught between two cultures, just as he is caught between his desire to live in the real world and in the world of his imagination.
Short
This is
a poem
with short
verses.
Short like
Abuela’s
time in school.
She stopped
going after
the second
grade, had to
stay home
and take care
of the babies,
feed them
powdered milk,
rock them in her
arms, sing
them lullabies
to induce
their midday
siesta.
Short like
Papá who
was 5’2’ and
has only gotten
shorter, back
hunched
from decades
of mopping
floors.
Short like
the life of
my abuelo,
who had
cancer and
no health care,
who instead of
going to the
hospital sat
in the backyard
under the sun
slowly
rotting like a
mango.
This is
a poem
with short
verses.
Way
too
short.