MAX LEMUZ - POEMS

Max Lemuz is a Mexican-American who recently graduated from California State University, San Bernardino with a B.A. in English.  He tutors foster youth full-time and writes poetry in his head all the time.  He spends his weekends with his amazing wife and daughter in San Bernardino.  His work has been published or is forthcoming in the Pacific Review, the Triggerfish Critical Review, and SoFloPoJo.

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Shopping List 
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​Non-slip shoes that can cross bridges
Over interstates that border patrols station.
 
A passport to travel to the place
Where lips meet ashen documents.
 
A Juniper tree and water, don’t
Forget to unpot it when leaves bitter.
 
A pencil sharpener, you’re running
On dull, plaid landscapes creep to gray.
 
Clothespins to hang memories of sugar,
Wring out the blood and start over.
 
A weather report to know that tears
Are natural, curse umbrella nemesis.
 
An apology that tastes of birria,
Let the fat melt away clenched fists.
 
A business to start that has candy,
Roads, paper cuts, concepts, and square
Feet to fit a list of border dreams.
 
 
 

Overpass
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​The concrete rainbow
leaps over streams
of my consciousness,
blocking the copper rays
that the sun cannons
to the yucca plant.
One teeters on the edge
of the fatherly shadow,
getting sucked in
by light’s quicksand
as noon’s eyelid closes. 
I can see each plant waving
their green fingers, their white
eyes motionless as I rev by.
But I can’t see their necks
from here.  How do they
swallow the golden drippings
we curse at and
turn the A/C on for?
 
 

But Also, Archibald MacLeish
​

​And here face down beneath the moon
And here upon the cold dim ray
To feel the always coming soon
The always rising of the day
 
To feel rise up the glowing east
The earthy warm of dawn meets grain
Upon the crown of every beast
And ever dropping shadows wane
 
And brilliant Launceston has growth
The golden Wattle feeds to bloom
And to the floating speckled moth
To propagate from sill to tomb
 
And Tokyo its outline bold
The silhouette but aftermath
And concrete wild wakes up to hold
The dreams of complex ages passed
 
And Al-Hasa’s oases shine
As darkness sweeping up the hill
And waking does the cliffside’s eye
With dewy tears the lenses fill
 
And now at Casablanca’s port
The water shimmers on each hull
And life of every kind and sort
Have broken from nights tempting lull
 
And at Quito’s cathedral’s heart
The organs beam to welcome light
And beveled cross’s shadows start
Up champagne steps to the clasped fight