Ars Poetica Sonnet #2

The sonnet is an overstuffed arepa. You filled it with carne asada, pollo, carnitas, aguacate, queso, huevo, frijoles, arroz, lechuga and tomate. It’s bound to fall apart. The sonnet is a bachata song that turns into a merengue song that turns back into a bachata song. It starts slow, speeds up, ends slow. The sonnet is the soccer ball your dad gave you for Christmas that you kicked onto the street and got crushed by a car. It’s a present you destroy. The sonnet is the bathroom door of my abuela’s orange house in Guatemala. No matter how hard you push, it won’t close. —

Alejandro Pérez is a student at Columbia University in New York. He is a 2019 Pushcart Prize nominee whose poems and flash fiction pieces have appeared or are forthcoming in Boulevard, Pacifica Literary Review, DIAGRAM, Blue Earth Review, DIALOGIST, Typehouse Magazine, decomP, and Spanish-language magazines in Venezuela, Chile, and Spain.