Intake

Have you seen cars in the past

10 years have you heard
Voices followed them to the curb

Left out bowls of milk
Are you thirsty all the time

How thirsty how encamped

Your hair does it hurt
How would you describe

The polity of your parents
Ten words or less

Why or why not

Did you know every pit
Of you came through

A star some time
Ago do you think that is fun

Or kind of stupid

When you think about it
Do you think about it

Really dig in your soul
What would you say it was

Haunts you scares you up

History of drugs
Mental illness rope

History of self harm self worth
Self undesired undeserved

A take a strait a people

Undetermined
In the squall

In the streets looted history
Carried through found out can’t be kept

From us we are telling you right now

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Cover of TLR's "Fight" issueRoberto Montes is the author of I Don’t Know Do You, named one of the Best Books of 2014 by NPR and a finalist for the 2014 Thom Gunn Award for Gay Poetry from The Publishing Triangle.

“Intake” originally appeared in FIGHT (TLR, Spring 2016).