Dimitri Reyes
Dimitri Reyes is a Boricua multidisciplinary artist, content creator, organizer, and educator from Newark, NJ. His first chapbook, Every First & Fifteenth won the Digging Press 2020 Chapbook Award and is currently in its second printing.. Some of his work is published in Vinyl, Kweli, Entropy, Cosmonauts, Obsidian, & Acentos. He is the Marketing & Communications Director at CavanKerry Press and an Artist-in-Residence with NJPAC. Find out more at dimitrireyespoet.com
Child Support
The courts can recognize man
by a recklessness of shooting
chromosomes and calling them
young black & brown sons,
the way baby boys are
birthed by mothers with
birth certificates and lone signatures
on lines with room for two
are the feeps of cameras on
Christmas and graduations,
good enough for Facebook tags
and quantifying congratulations
so he doesn’t stop at one baby
as long as he recognizes bodies
and bloodlines stay interchangeable,
as long as he assumes
the backs of women remain
like fulcrums to balance the weight
of carrying a boy
for 18 years
wherein this 18 years
he will take his own mother—
his dear, dear, life-giver
to her doctor’s appointment
and she will test
positive for a painful back
at such a bend
from raising he alone.
Doña Maria’s
She came to America wanting
to put precious moments figuras on a shelf
which she did around the restaurant.
What she really enjoyed was slinging orders of fried food
to the cops, kids, and viejos of the neighborhood
while singing Boleros. Don’t call her doña,
she prefers casa because she doesn’t serve her food
but offers the tastes of holidays and marriages
on any given day. Except of course, this love
is paid but you can bet there is home here
from opening to closing. Always packed,
always loud, always fragrant and Maria’s
hair is aired out now. More grasa than champú
where her English is ever clearer outside the store
than it was any other Monday evening.
With the rent higher than her 5-foot frame,
she looks at us in our coats, passing our stoops
and skateboards after another 8 o’clock closing.
She says see you tomorrow and we say
goodbye. Trusting that she is right.
Trusting she’ll come back home.
Both poems were originally published in Every First & Fifteenth by Digging Press