Poetry and Arts

Hand-Me-Down Halloween

By Natalie Diaz The year we moved off / the reservation / a / white / boy up the

By Natalie Diaz When my brother died I worried there wasn’t enough time to deliver the one hundred invitations

To Abuelita Neli This is my 14th time pressing roses in fake passports for each year I haven’t climbed marañón

the boy’s face climbed back down the twelve-year tunnel of its becoming, a charcoal sunflower swallowing itself. Who has eyes

The evening news helicopters compete for the best camera angle above the water, fighting to find anything worthy of coverage.

The teacher can’t hear the children over all this monsoon racket, all the zillion spoons whacking the rusty roofs, all

For Chino In the middle of that desert that didn’t look like sand and sand only, in the middle

This is for Amal, whose name means hope, who thinks of each tree she’s planted like a child, whose family

To hold the bird and not to crush her, that is the secret. Sand turned too quickly to cement and

We ate labneh and bread in your tents When we had no water we drew it from your well Your

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