Michael Luis Medrano
Michael Luis Medrano is currently enrolled in the MFA Creative Writing
Program at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Birth
I was born in the cavity of sunsets,
in the jarring streets of dreams and urban landscapes
where I hold my liquor. I parade my ass
in lowly brothels, on street corners carving
cities in two. Among friends I salute the night
with the hot shot of whiskey its fiery liquid
oozing the entrails of my poetic throat.
I feel my fictional leg and foot
mashing everything below me:
the wise cockroaches with their sudden fame;
the black spiders with their crooked wrists and elbows;
my greasy homeboys in huarache sandals
drunk off the spectacle of their own faces;
i even mash the gash of my father s death-
wound, who died here, in this lowly brothel,
among these roving insects and saints.
They found the limp man naked by the jukebox
with a small leg protruding from his ribs.
How do you know this? A karmic cloth hid his genitals,
disguising his sex. Did it have anything to do with blindness?
His eyes slanted shut from the blood of many beers.
Did the leg kick or squeak a few Spanish lines?
No, the limb remained intact until the patrons birthed him.
What about the boy inside the wound inside the father s womb?
This was my beginning. In this drunken whore of a town,
many years ago.
