i.
We climbed over the couch pushed
against the door. Bodies flapped like fish
downstairs. We ditched through the
window. Drifted west. I’d never met him
but she said he was real so we sat with
buffet pizza and merlot on the event
horizon of a whirlpool around
our drafty farmstead, grateful
for gentle tides pulling
away from hipsters.
ii.
Onions, peppers, curry and pasta.
All this to summon her back from
her famished queendom on the raft.
In the loudest place on earth, she
bored out her ears. In days of plenty,
she farmed ulcers in her belly shriveled
like a raisin. Skin and bone and sun, sun, sun.
Robert Torres moved to Portland last year for no discernible reason. He was running the Pegasus Reading Series in Dallas before he left. Prior to that, he founded the Punk Poet Society in Denton, Texas and hosted the Free Word webcast in Dallas. He got BAs in Creative Writing and Theatre Performance from the University of North Texas. He is currently preparing to release his first full-length book of poems, Design Your Own Container Reality.