-for Chris

projections / of a boxer with a skirt taking the fall / a poet cutting out their own tongue / a school of fish diving into darkness / a deli sandwich left on a park bench for a homeless person nearby / a musician’s hands being thrown into a plastic bag / big ben’s minute and hour hands going backwards / two friedas playing pattycake / a person performing sexual acts over the phone to a party of anthropology graduate students / my mother putting on her first estrogen patch as a younger woman / all the bar stools seem to be on the ceiling growing from metal trees

s.g. maldonado-vélez is a Puerto Rican poet/artist with an MFA in Poetry from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. They have been published in Hunger Mountain, the Shade Journal, Peach Mag, and more. s.g. can be found on Twitter @M00NP0ET and at sgmaldonadovelez.com. They strongly believe that we share hearts.