Years After A Water Gun Fight In Diane’s Living Room, I Return to California
I sent my mom a vintage
postcard from Los Angeles
letting her know that I was
bringing the sun back with me,
amanita red bursting through
the unnatural earth of my shirt
but I didn’t tell her that I saw
Diane in the sunburst hair of
a dying star that made Elaine
wear all black and let her eyes
linger like a growing knot in
the pit of my stomach
or that I saw her in the wind that separated around the floating wings of the Pasadena
parrots, mythologized in their
migration, gusted through the
mustard plants that burst like wildfire
on Hollywood’s hills, and
rolled on each one like a heartbeat
until she hit Idyllwild and died
down to the speed of a flatline.
I’m Not Brave
There is nothing I can say about Frank Ocean that Shayla Lawson hasn’t already said but
in our blonde years Nick’s hair faded white as Othello and he shaved two lines in his
eyebrows. I followed suit even though my eyebrows were as translucent as shimmering
stardust because that’s what brothers do when they can’t read the premonitions in fallen
follicles that would have shown how my eyebrows will crawl closer to brown each year
after Nick becomes a folded flag. And now as I count the distance between light years, I
watch as Gavin shaves his eyebrows forehead smooth after his father’s funeral because
when he looked in the mirror he saw the same gray knots spiraling out of control but I let
mine grow, each new filament that pops up in the middle blurring the line between what’s
right and wrong, and I know everything I am or ever will be is enough.
Ode to a Road Trip on Stolen Land
I plucked a butterfly
from the grill of my car
the wings folded tight
like a forgotten hardback
tucked away in a dusty thrift
store in the Christmas Valley
its blood red tips gave way
to shades of geometric orange
so out of ignorance
I called it a monarch
I called it Chief Joseph
I called it Chief Paulina
I named a lake after it
I built it a stone statue
to tell of the courage
it took to fight the wind
stare death in the headlights
and crash into my history.
Aaron Hand is a writer of poetry and nonfiction currently living in Portland, Oregon. He has previously been published in Faultline Journal, Hart House Review, Four Chambers Press, Meniscus, and a handful of Xeroxed zines. In addition to his own creative writing pursuits, Aaron volunteers his time to Portland's Submission Reading Series.