Last, or Next to Last Elegy

I wrote this poem years ago. I’ve written it
1000 times. I’ve dreamed this dream more times

than I can count
the pores in my skin.

This morning, the ocean spits
346 human fingers onto some dark shore.

I’m far away, but as the sun
severs the horizon, the flashing

of police cars fill the coastline. In the distance,
cops collect limbs like pearls & dust them

for fingerprints. They ask townsfolks
for missing bodies. They clip photographs

from last month’s newspapers. The hungry
earth is a picky eater. I want to hold

my brother’s finger one last time.

Aldo Amparán is the author of Brother Sleep (Alice James Books, 2022), which won the Alice James Award in 2020, and was a finalist for the Lambda Literary Award for Gay Poetry in 2023. They are the recipient of fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts & CantoMundo. Amparán's work has appeared in the Academy of American Poets' Poem-a-Day, Best New Poets, New England Review, Ploughshares, Poetry Magazine, & elsewhere.