Poem Written in the Parking Lot of a Tattoo Shop While Waiting for an Appointment

Sun sets like a man leaving his day job

to get to his night job on time. Oh, me?

I’m in search of any kind of permanence,

sitting in my car, watching the unreliable

light bleed out on the horizon, listening

to the minutes drift like smoke into nothing.

Nothing stays in this world— it is known—

yet I too will bleed in foolish defiance.

Ariel Francisco is the author of All My Heroes Are Broke (C&R Press, 2017) and Before Snowfall, After Rain (Glass Poetry Press, 2016). Born in the Bronx to Dominican and Guatemalan parents, he was raised in Miami and completed his MFA at Florida International University. His poems have appeared in Best New Poets 2016, Gulf Coast, Poets.org, Prelude, Washington Square, and elsewhere. He lives in South Florida (for now).