JP Infante

Between the Park and Home

Between the park and home, a brown man is passed out in the middle of the street.
My daughter asks, What happened? 
I explain liquor. 
The man lays on the yellow line, making the streets safer, cars slow down around him.
Between the park and home, we pass the block I smoked too many blunts on for it to be cool.
I reunite with men who were men when I was a teen.
They greet me. Sometimes they greet my daughter 
and when she doesn’t respond, I don’t make her.
Between the park and home, an ambulance is blocking traffic. 
I think to myself, I failed to call 911 sooner.
My daughter’s voice breaks my train of thought, 
she says, Daddy, you’re squeezing my hand.

Where Everything is From

Bright orange syringe tops
like petals, once a flower.
Torn by doubt.
Loves me. Loves me not.
Until thumb touches plunger 
and needle becomes vein.

Questions dissolve downstream and floods make riverbanks river and mudslides replace home and where everything is from is uprooted leaving nothing to long for.

JP INFANTE is an award-winning writer, educator and Borough of Manhattan Community College alumni. His audiobook/ebook digital Buying Cocaine is available at infantejp.com . His forthcoming chapbook La Kapital (DWA Press 2021) is a collaboration with visual artist Leonardo Ilianov that explores Dominican Identity and masculinity. His debut, On the Tip of Your Mother’s Tongue, is the winner of Thirty West’s 2020 Chapbook Contest and his short story, “Without a Big One,” won the PEN Robert J. Dau Short Story Prize for Emerging Writers and appears in PEN America Best Debut Short Stories for 2019. He holds an MFA from The New School.