Gnashing Teeth Publishing

| words that get in your teeth

Blender by Alex Z Salinas

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.

shadow image of a man pushing a cart with a large wheel and small umbrella

Pushcart Prize Nominees for 2023

Gnashing Teeth Publishing is proud to submit the following poems for consideration of the Pushcart Prize. Each of these nominees had work published by us in 2023, whether online or

BOOK REVIEW: gossypiin by Ra Malika Imhotep

Roots, ancestors, bending limbs and time. Ra Malika Imhotep’s gossypiin is a harvest of the experiences and discussions of black women. The meaning of the title, like many of her

The Reflection by Nadia Nunez

What an obscurity energy there’s no serenity A smile is what you’ll never see All you’ll hear is “In memory” Not a single ring on the telephone All you see

connect

we love hearing from you. tell us everything