Ulyses Razo

Firecloud

          I don’t care
about the flowers, which I merely invented
to give myself another reason to address you.                                      

            —Aleksandar Ristović

When Brenda Hillman wrote
spring opened like autobiography
 
I saw bodies being assumed by the sky.
 
The creeks running down my arms in the shower
were also my veins.
 
And instead of leaves,
instead of branches,
clouds growing on trees.
 
Everyone was watering their mountains
and I could feel my plastic heart
 
bleeding out in the amber bushes.
 
Glaciers floated by in the sky like ships;
the moon was a monastery.
 
A cloud was on fire where I lived.
 
How I wish you were here
so you could see it & say,
 
I knew you could do it;
I always had faith.

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Ulyses Razo’s poems have appeared in or are forthcoming from Spectra Poets, dream boy book club, Wonder, Die Quieter Please, dirt child, and elsewhere. He was a 2023 fellow at Paul Smith’s College and lives in London. He’s on Instagram @ulysesrazo.