Five Poems by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal

Five Poems
by Luis Cuauhtémoc Berriozábal





Talk All Day
 
I talk myself
into silence.
 
I use my hands 
to talk sometimes.
 
Without talking
I say so much.
 
I talk all day
from light to dusk.
 
I make small talk
and chew the fat.
 
I gnaw at words
swallowing them
 
whole. The words are
a high-pitched scream 
 
when the walls are
full of flies in
 
my dreams with all
their eyes on me.

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Here I Stand
 
Here I stand
all alone
I will not
bow my head 
to you. I 
will look you
in the eye 
and laugh out
loud at your
nonsense while 
I return
to my bed 
and do my
best to sleep
and to dream.
 

Five Minutes
 
In five minutes 
I can walk half
way to work, if
I do not get held
up along the way.
 
The streets are safe
enough but one
never knows. I called
Lyft to get me to
where I need to go.
 
In the five minute
wait I wrote this
poem from the
bakery ten minutes 
from the office.
 

Yesterday’s Clouds
 
Night devoured yesterday’s
clouds. It is as if they were
never there the next morning.
There were no remnants left,
not even a smudge or smidge
of a cloud left in the Western 
skies. It must have spit out
stars and the crescent shaped
moon as it gorged and nourished 
its ever-expanded belly. Two
days later the clouds returned,
gracing the skies for miles and
miles. 


​Big Fail
 
I had eggs
for breakfast
over-medium,
hash brown 
potatoes,
side of bacon,
crispy, and
sourdough toast.
 
I had eggs
for breakfast,
over-medium,
which came out
over hard, no
yolk to dip 
my bread, big
fail… hash brown
potatoes saved
the day, just right.
The crispy bacon
fell apart like
bacon bits, big
fail… but not as
big as the eggs.
 
Coffee was not
so good, but it
was hot as hell;
had to wait 10
minutes to drink.
By that time I
already finished
my breakfast,
big fail… 
 
Still, it could have
been worse.
No Yelp review here.
Just a mediocre poem.
 
​

Bio:


​Born in Mexico, Luis lives in California, and works in the mental health field in Los Angeles, CA. His poems have appeared in Blue Collar Review, Kendra Steiner Editions, Mad Swirl, Sacred Chickens, and Unlikely Stories. Raw Materials, was his first poetry book, which was published by Pygmy Forest Press.
​

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