I asked my parents, Why Houston?

The synths of summer lay a mirage.
A woman’s belt fills another corner.

Rain as smoke :: smoke as violet liquid.
A child’s plastic toy melts on the sidewalk.

Finally, it’s spring in Houston.

Seneca’s told the daisies his secret —
pin your dreams on the night & you will dream
forever.

The mockingbirds, usual snobs, intrude & say,
wrong. You’re a philosopher, not a dramatist.

    A gust of sewer wind responds,
what’s the difference?

The answer — a collision. Metal & fire
clothe illusion. Metal & skin

ring the sirens. So a man lifts a woman
like a body of water lifts a sea cavern

    & the dark pins in the ground turn away,
    remaining indifferent in the matters of verse.

But the sun, too partial over the earth, lays her tongue
& pretends to feed the other seven.

Soon delicacies, she thinks. Soon, I will be motherless
without my lapdog.

        Look, she points with a flare —
        they write to me as if it would spare them.
            How cute.

See — motion & sound :: imagery & curtains,
are all there is to the seasons, an aster says.

I would know, she finishes. I was told lies.
Stoicism is bullshit.

Angel Anchondo is a first-generation student at the University of Houston in Texas. A teacher in training, they are enamored with poetics. “Writing provides me with the language, platform, and creative liberty to speak on what I like to call the ‘paradoxical nature’ of existing and living. More specifically (and perhaps less pretentiously), I love how poetry can rewire thought & logical thinking patterns, fondle with language, and bring people closer to releasing themselves through it. It is, besides a nice excuse to burrow myself in words, a vocation to make great company with them.”