Andres Rojas

Encore

We fly, angels all
now gravity’s loss,
instruments of air better than real,
have Winehouse or Holiday voices
at will, even Cobain’s,

hold no jobs, can find anyone
known or not but seldom try, spend
our time instead with our one true one.
Scientists tried to imagine

how the world dawned thus.
Now they spend their days
with their one true one.
Priests too. Still
 
when I float off the grass
invoking like Parker
on an unseen sax,
my solar plexus knows I’m not.
And I’ll never be. Him.

Seeing My Father

How did his car lay, solitary,
a lesser moon deflecting moonlight
barred by the shadows of pines,

my own from the porch light behind me
bent, another layer in the glass
under which his hands rose to the wheel,

barely seen through pollen and dust
as in life, his too-small chest and head
a reflection of glare and tried eyes,

wanting, perhaps, more than was there:
the non-gesture of breeze on branches,
the moon half hid in a cloud-cage sky.

Andres Rojas came to the U.S. from Cuba at age 13. He holds an MFA. and JD from the University of Florida. His poems have appeared or are forthcoming in, among others, Barrow Street, Cossack Review, Massachusetts Review, and the New England Review. contact