Santa Ana, CA

By Justin Nguyen

 

this is for the child with the back pocket holster

for a father

the one who holds God in his right hand

and cups tears in his left

for the one who finds power

in poisoning the powerless

because the only way he knows how lift his chin up

is propping it on someone else’s shoulder

for the one whose dinner needed to be thawed

and poked to perforate the lack of a mother’s smell

 

his classroom was the canvas

of government owned white walls

where the greatest lessons were scrolled

so passerbys could read his insides

and grade him on his relative genius

 

his origins were indigenous

to the street light lined runways

but every flight out was delayed or canceled

 

his skin

thicker than the cigarette smoked filled air

would make it impossible to fit through the cracks of open doors

 

with no one to hold on to

no escape route to be blazed

his fate conceived within a manila misfortune

 

finger steady on his lifeline

his future destined to fall flat

without a blip on the screen

 

his passing would be considered another

fad of the weak tragedy

with his blood stained t-shirt the new trend

 

his remembrance futile

a shiny stone lays to embody all he was

but there’s not enough room to tell of all the stories

all the times

where he laid with fists clenched and arms crossed

looking up at the fifth wall

wondering if the barrel of the revolver

finally spun on the losing cylinder

ending a life predestined to fall on probability

 

this is the chance that too many beings are borned into

separated by black gloves and white coated horsemen

where self-preservation only knows its existence

through misinformed

through uneducated

through brainwashed genocide