As in dreams, as in life, in steaming black coffee

The faces fade, the bodies fade, heat fades

She critiqued Bolaño’s books saying they lean

Toward self-destruction & she was right

“Everything points to death,” she said

And then I kissed her soft white neck

I slept sleepless for a week straight &

Thought, If I go away for a good while

The voices in my head become colorless

As if time is the Great Blender

I remember drinks my mother used to shake

Slush the color of tapioca, or was it bright green?

I dreamt of becoming tall like my maternal grandfather

And he was the first to enter back into the dirt

I think of how Dante dreamt of Virgil

And how I daydream of Bolaño’s dangling

Cigarette saluting the ground on which he trampled

My dirt, his dirt, the earth of Latin America

I’m not Latin American—not American

I’m the color wedged between two maps.

Alex Z. Salinas is the author of two full-length poetry collections from Hekate Publishing: WARBLES and DREAMT, or The Lingering Phantoms of Equinox. He holds an M.A. in English Literature and Language from St. Mary’s University. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.