Dodo Eraser

back to the future

doc brown and marty
worked retail together
found / in down time /
mutual awe for the other’s
place in age-spectrums
and enough commonality
to see multiverse possibility

my doc was a white hippy
who once snorted a coke
kilo the band agreed to sell //
he carried guilt in his pocket
a japanese flag his father
trophied / bloodied kanji
in the empty space

around the sun // he dreamed
of finding the family / kids
without a father / giving
closure as if 50 years
couldn’t scab naturally //
I wonder if the proverbs /
in oxidizing red and silk /

say something about my uncle
needing money
nibbing pig’s blood
scribbling gibberish
for american saviors
oh how a mixed-race marty
wanted that piece of home

The World Within a Frame
after “Bowl of Oranges” by Conor Oberst

Manoy stole the things significant
only to the young, porno mags
and GI Joes for Christmas presents.

For punishment, Brown Dad brindled
his skin with whacks from the belt
and threatened him with the hunger

and the brownness of the Philippines.
When I was his stealing age, I listened
to the kind of music of the kids I wanted

to be, never finding my own until
I heard a dude, three years younger,
sing about a bowl of oranges

and how if you just hold my hand,
I think that that would help.
Now I steal the inconsequential,

like masking tape hidden under a tarp,
a bartender’s cleaning rag, extra spoons
from the froyo joint because I’ve lived

hungry and brown,
and I’ve lost the fear of going home
as long as you come with me.

---

Christian Hanz Lozada (he/him) aspires to have the slow, stuttering breeze-mimic of a sloth, but in the water he flies. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart and Best of the Net nominated poetry have been published all over the world, including in Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry Review, and Emerson Review. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.