Andres Rojas

Soon Before All Light Is Gone

Frame now as a hand like a wave
on night’s sea, crashing. Still

a child, he peels seconds
off the evening

like insect wings:
boots multiply, breed

mud, see there’s no getting
out.

            In the movie-set
courtroom, smoke

refracts shadows
and meat-marbled

light:
the war criminal

shrugs in his death
shackles, bored of resignation,

pointing fingers harden
to bullets and skulls. Now

frame the boy as he fears
for the sun’s canary egg

as it breaks to be healed. And frame
how he cries for dead cicadas

oblivious
to the will of the swarm.

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Andres Rojas is the author of the chapbook Looking For What Isn’t There (Paper Nautilus Debut Series winner, 2019) and of the audio chapbook The Season of the Dead (EAT Poems, 2016). His poetry has been featured in the Best New Poets series and has most recently appeared or is forthcoming in, among others, AGNI, Barrow Street, Colorado Review, Massachusetts Review, New England Review and Poetry Northwest.