Portal of Breaking Cycles
I do not want to feel the privilege in a man’s spit or in the way he says my name I want to feel his hands trace my stretch marks over brown body, cut his fingers on this glass of jagged healing when we touched hands was it that impulse to look a man in the eyes, want love not ask for love, I still think it’s so wrong, do I deserve an empty space he leaves when he goes, I want to be enveloped in a terrible dazzling thing, sometimes I explore how my expectations of violence intrude a tender moment, because even then I want a man’s revenge-love knife at my neck to slit.
Mateo Perez Lara (they/them/theirs) is a queer, non-binary, Latinx poet from California. They have a pamphlet of poems, Glitter Gods, showcased with Thirty West Publishing House. They have an MFA in Poetry from Randolph College. Their poems have been published in EOAGH, The Maine Review, The Acentos Review, and elsewhere.
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