or a poem for the toilet where I throw up my bloodline
yes, there is a wall
inside my stomach,
Latinos Live Longer But
built from shifted organs Less Healthy Lives:
refusing to absorb
anything that enters.
it all comes back, like The Average Life Expectancy of
jesus on easter. like my Selected Ages (in Years) by Race
grandfather in his bolo tie and Ethnicity: Non-Hispanic White
I can’t sleep for hours
after eating. doctors’ notes (birth, 78.8), Hispanic (birth,
81.2)
written in the lining of a vessel
unsettled, different than my own.
I still can’t divine the source, Demographers call this the
the moment that leaves me
kneeled to you in search of absolution
for a diaspora of illness. it’s risen,
returned, routine, calling forth
something unexplained like the Hispanic Epidemiological Paradox
sound of someone else’s prayer
in reverse.