A Poem by Michael Cox-Maldonado

for Fred D’Aguiar

To search online if it’s your prostate?
Petrifying, like spotting
a poison tree frog on your palm.
A lump that pollutes.
My professor, polite and playful,
I will write, just like you.
Us drinking Shock Top at Wolfgang Pucks.
Picture us poeticizing with all the p’s and piss.
Pick up the pace? How with plague and police?
Us! Slices of pie, like a couple of pals,
when life pitches us into garbage pails.
I see my-writer-self, at a bay window.
Now I recall that it was you, having just moved here.
I’m happy that on this earth you’re still here,
where we play like petite princes on this planet here.

Michael Cox-Maldonado went to the University of California, Los Angeles to study English literature and creative writing. A local to Southern California, he now works as a Lighting Technician for film/tv, where he writes on the side. He has poetry published in Westwind and Beyond Words Literary Journal.