Julián Martinez
Questions For You, or, Telepathic Ponderings While You Sit On Your Phone Next to Me
What if we kissed under the Cloudbuster sign?
What if we kissed front row at the Randy Newman concert?
What if we kissed in the sports bra section of Super-Walmart?
What if we kissed at the number two gas pump at the Mobil on Western and Pratt?
What if we kissed on the bus in Judgement City, after we died
unfulfilled last lifetime, and got sent back to be braver in this life?
What if we kissed in the 90’s-style food court in the HIP in Norridge, IL,
in our PJ’s, before the stores opened?
And we walked around your teenage mall, you introducing me to the gumball machines and the
aged janitor and we both met the soul-draining renovations and kissed there, too?
After we dropped your brother and his wife and your nieces off at the airport, then pet-sat their
bungalow for a week?
What if we kissed that night after staring so long into each other’s eyes, we forgave our pains?
What if that was the moment the judges decided we’d move onward into the stars, side by side?
What if we kissed front row at the Randy Newman concert?
What if we kissed in the sports bra section of Super-Walmart?
What if we kissed at the number two gas pump at the Mobil on Western and Pratt?
What if we kissed on the bus in Judgement City, after we died
unfulfilled last lifetime, and got sent back to be braver in this life?
What if we kissed in the 90’s-style food court in the HIP in Norridge, IL,
in our PJ’s, before the stores opened?
And we walked around your teenage mall, you introducing me to the gumball machines and the
aged janitor and we both met the soul-draining renovations and kissed there, too?
After we dropped your brother and his wife and your nieces off at the airport, then pet-sat their
bungalow for a week?
What if we kissed that night after staring so long into each other’s eyes, we forgave our pains?
What if that was the moment the judges decided we’d move onward into the stars, side by side?
Biblically Accurate Angels
Having sex with the bees and the eagles
is what the Attack on Titan theme sounds like after the thirtieth episode of my binge,
so I leave my couch for a walk, March 18th, the first warm Chicago afternoon –
knowing extinction looms, it’s good to soak some Westward sun while I can.
Maybe we’re living in Revelations, how the road smoulders with light and salt.
Something supernatural reaches through the concrete to warn me – I walk
home for shelter. Elucid raps, “my angel’s got fifty wings, eight pairs of eyes”
in my ears — at night, I’m on a train to an AA meeting I was close to not going to,
late, it’s raining and any faith I had in the day has lit the match
of news of Bandcamp being bought out by some corporation,
the last episode of the Kanye doc being another exhausted mind in late-stage
empire and I thumb my phone like a sore, footage of bomb eruptions, oh
praise be, praise be to, praise be to the words I can’t think of
as I replay the same Mach-Hommy song over, over. The one where he says
he can’t sleep from keeping strong too long – I feel like that all the time.
I pull my earbuds out and listen to the metal roar of the train tracks underneath
as if there was some hidden heavenly message and not just more life-ending shit for me to fear.
is what the Attack on Titan theme sounds like after the thirtieth episode of my binge,
so I leave my couch for a walk, March 18th, the first warm Chicago afternoon –
knowing extinction looms, it’s good to soak some Westward sun while I can.
Maybe we’re living in Revelations, how the road smoulders with light and salt.
Something supernatural reaches through the concrete to warn me – I walk
home for shelter. Elucid raps, “my angel’s got fifty wings, eight pairs of eyes”
in my ears — at night, I’m on a train to an AA meeting I was close to not going to,
late, it’s raining and any faith I had in the day has lit the match
of news of Bandcamp being bought out by some corporation,
the last episode of the Kanye doc being another exhausted mind in late-stage
empire and I thumb my phone like a sore, footage of bomb eruptions, oh
praise be, praise be to, praise be to the words I can’t think of
as I replay the same Mach-Hommy song over, over. The one where he says
he can’t sleep from keeping strong too long – I feel like that all the time.
I pull my earbuds out and listen to the metal roar of the train tracks underneath
as if there was some hidden heavenly message and not just more life-ending shit for me to fear.
Julián Martinez is the son of Mexican and Cuban immigrants and is from Waukegan, IL. His work has appeared in HAD, Hooligan Mag, Prolit and elsewhere. His work has received The Society of Professional Journalists’ Mark of Excellence and has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize. Find him online @martinezfjulian. As a DJ, he goes by the name DJ Guadalupe (aka A Vato with Serato) and can be heard rocking a party near you.