THERE’S A DONUT SHOP IN OJAI, CALIFORNIA
that lets you smoke cigarettes. My brother
exhaled through the fingers of a bear
claw. Our last breakfast together is still
caught in my molars. I ash its memory
like Parliaments. He told me the joke
about Noah. How he always kept the skunks
in a lifeboat, dragging behind the Ark.
In that booth we were sacred, holding
our worst selves behind us—Brian
held a glazed ring above his head.
It glistened. That half-eaten halo.
Steven Espada Dawson is from East Los Angeles and lives in Austin. He is the son of a Mexican immigrant and a 2021 Ruth Lilly and Dorothy Sargent Rosenburg Fellow. His recent poems appear in The Adroit Journal, Best New Poets, Gulf Coast, Kenyon Review Online, Split Lip Magazine, and Waxwing.
The Boiler 