Gallina
They’re about to outlaw cock-
fights and the wild
roosters keep me
company as I eat a 3pm breakfast
of coffee and sweets.
We drive past galleras
that I’ll someday dream of
buying to start a commune
of repurposed cages turned
shared bedrooms.
How dare we invent.
Our gallera, his and mine,
might echo with Island Babies
and all the fury of our incompatible
god(desses) bowing to the land that swallows.
How dare I invent.
The chicken bones make love
-ly rosaries. And rosaries make love
-ly bed ornaments. And in bed
we carve tinsel into the air.
It’s been [REDACTED] since I last had sex.
A kind woman in a sterile room asks
but I still see chickens out
her window. I’ve never tried
to catch one. I just stomp—
scatter!
Laura Andrea is a writer and poet from Carolina, Puerto Rico. She holds an MFA in Creative from the University of Texas at El Paso and was a 2023 Periplus Fellow. They’re the author of genderbi (Ghost City Press, 2022), Prestige TV Killed the Starlet (Bottlecap Press, 2023), and Desapariciones y otros cuentos (Editora Educadora Emergente, 2024). You can follow her day-to-day online @lauranlora on Instagram and Twitter.
BACK TO ISSUE