Now

Nicknames for Dinosaurs

She had a sancho in Michoacán. He gave me my faulty spine in the dusk. I had to get two injections in my spine. Nurse, what kept you? I hate the word hairdo over style. How can dead things do anything? There’s a place in the sun where I eat old birthday cake. You know the best way to get there. Our mothers were enemies—Polka dots at funerals. Macaws fall in love with other planets. I can’t keep their trees from dying. I forgot what tree my lover lives in. He forgot to paint a door.

The Piñata

My best lover busted a honeydew melon over my kneecap because I said I didn’t like his razor-faded haircut. I preferred his hair to fall over his eyes so I could play peek-a-boo with him through Venetian blinds and cold sequins. Instead of the melon hurting, its juice made pantyhose that I could shimmy all night in. The overnight news carried headlines about our doomed affair, and the ink stains made glow holes in my palms.

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Monique Quintana is a Xicana from Fresno, CA, and is the author of Cenote City (Clash Books, 2019) and the chapbook, My Favorite Sancho and Other Fairy Tales (Sword and Kettle Press, 2021). Her work has been supported by Yaddo, Amplify, The Sundress Academy for the Arts, The Community of Writers, and The Kimmel Harding Nelson Center. You can find her at moniquequintana.com and @quintanagothic