You make my lonely life a
Paradise. You made my life
Outside my door. Outside my
Door: notion of night, motion
Of life tracked by lonely eye:
Icy moon. Paradise measured by
Distance or rooms? How many
Doors open to paradise in life
Sized down by lonely death? Is
Life less lonely outside my door? Is
Paradise more or less you? If
Paradise locks death outside then
Waste breath like nobody’s business
Going out of business. Paradise:
A pair of dice.
after Jonathan Lethem
El Greco, Yo-Yo Ma’s cello, marshmallows in my grandma’s pantry many moons ago, singles at
tables reading books, self-proclaimed bibliophiles, the first half of G.K. Chesterton’s The Man
Who Was Thursday, the second half of basketball games, Saturdays, Air Force Ones (the dirtier
the better), shortbread and black coffee, Gumby, Johnny Quest, David Letterman’s grin, the
smell of oxidation on mass market paperbacks, Toni Morrison’s sentences, Dairy Queen, pasta
after sex, medieval skulls, writing on my knees, knee socks, your post-shower mermaid locks,
petrichor, soreness in the core, the scorched-earth prose of Fernanda Melchor, unfurled ribbons,
unused railroad tracks, the cover of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged (first edition), first editions,
ribbons of paint on an artist’s hand, farmers’ hands, circus-style handstands, frock coats, slate
skies, Hershey bars, lobster bisque in Salem Mass., the word spell, the word labyrinthine, short
speeches with salient points, the notion of Halloween, the word potion, the spellbinding
craftsmanship in Jiro Dreams of Sushi, Haruki Murakami, Enter the Dragon, the pound-for-
pound shearing of Dickinson’s poems, Mom and Pops, my brothers and sister, blue neon, green
gum, red ink, clean bedsheets, your copper hairs trapped in my clothes, people blowing clouds of
smoke in black-and-white photos, sunsets, West Texas, chessboards, The Matrix, the lighting in
David Fincher’s films, early Linkin Park, Coltrane’s cascading notes, computer coding, the
notion of outer space, stars in low light pollution—ah, the stars: look but don’t touch.
Alex Z. Salinas is the author of four volumes of poetry and a collection of stories. His debut novel, The Dream Life of Larry Rios, is forthcoming in 2025 through FlowerSong Press. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.
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