Brother, I'd Like to Dream of it More Often

It's #tbt! Enjoy this great one from SWWIM Every Day's archives!

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Our dwindling pink,
something like sovereignty,
our pillows stuffed
with fables.

We were acrobats
too young to fathom the constraints
of the body—your bad knees,
my selfish need to rise.

Outside, the crabgrass spreading
like scripture. Our father will abandon
this land too, will call it unsaveable.

Still, I stretch
my arms as if receiving.
You nest in hush,
and lift.

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Leslie Sainz is a first generation Cuban-American, born and raised in Miami, Florida. The recipient of a 2021 National Endowment for the Arts Poetry Fellowship, she received her MFA in poetry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Her work has appeared in or is forthcoming from the Yale Review, New England Review, Kenyon Review Online, AGNI, jubilat, Narrative, and others. A two-time National Poetry Series finalist, she’s received scholarships, fellowships, and honors from CantoMundo, The Miami Writers Institute, The Adroit Journal, and The Stadler Center for Poetry & Literary Arts at Bucknell University. She is the managing editor of the New England Review. Her manuscript in progress has been a finalist for the National Poetry Series twice (2021, 2019) and a finalist for the Jake Adam York Prize, and the AWP Donald Hall Prize for Poetry.