Precious Moments

Dimitri Reyes

On every counter and beside                  the entertainment center,space is claimed by little wings plucking harps.                  Trumpets leading                  an unknown charge of credit cards.Boy knows heaven and its angels live                  in his home and aren't charged rent.                  He cleans the faces of angelsto be closer to figuras.                  To steal their breathto simulate their worth.Every Sunday he wipes down bookshelf altars                  asking white candle for permission.                  When lit, boy anoints their feet to bereminded of words not often uttered.They speak in minimalism,                  this is their design casting shadows                  on a picture frame's upper lip.                  He thinks himself into creationism:from-factory, to-check, to-store, to-home.A mom to always swallow pennies like pills,                  counting them all in the bank account                  of her bellyso boy answers to these tchotchkes                  because angels breed more angels.Boy reimagines her prized figurine                  from first communion                  with its beady cherubim eye.A lure, the circumferencing                  of a thrift store halogen lightshining on more porcelain dust collectors.And he thought he heard it say,                                        she made me once                                                          or                                                    she is one of us.

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photo of Dmitri Reyes
Photo:
Ray Ruiz

Dimitri Reyes is a Boricua multidisciplinary artist, YouTuber, and educator from Newark, New Jersey. Dimitri’s book, Every First and Fifteenth (2021) is the winner of the Digging Press 2020 Chapbook Award and some of his work has been nominated for a Pushcart and Best of the Net. You can find more of his writing in Vinyl, Kweli, Entropy, Duende, Cosmonauts, Obsidian, & Acentos. He is the Marketing & Communications Director at CavanKerry Press and an Artist-in-Residence with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Learn more about Dimitri by visiting his website at https://www.dimitrireyespoet.com/

cover of Every First & Fifteenth

Maywood, New Jersey

Situated in Newark, New Jersey's metropolitan landscape of multilingual communities, Reyes' narrator, a street corner bard guided by the spirits of urban artists, takes us on a journey of language alternations. Each poem is a negotiation between life on the streets and the joyful and sometimes perilous quest for self-discovery. Traversing the desires of wanting to fit in, to get something, to say something in secret — Reyes' eclectic poetic forms embody the duende, the cri de coeur, the hand-to-mouth hustle of urban life.

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