Fortunato Salazar

first anacreontic scrawled in dior addict fuchsia pink on fair skin in alice, tx

If God popped
into your Master
and spun birth
certificate and
$100 U.S. currency and water?

One week of being
set upon nonstop
each time we clear out,
before we even clear the door.

Kubler-Ross boxes
from going so long
punch-drunk on locker
confiscation bonuses and nothing dirtier
than flow from the tap.

Ominous Masters
inverted. Insults,
likely. God manned
a tower for just such flutter.

second anacreontic scrawled in dior addict fuchsia pink on fair skin in alice, tx

I debate circumcised
guy, he wrings out verse.

I wring out verse, I’m child preacher.

Just break down your Alpha Kilo Juliett Victor,
circumcision is nothing, uncircumcision is nothing, He’ll
give you all you need,

give Him all your worries. My bed is in a room, the room
flesh made by hands, in the
long hours alone I practice forensic in recliner.

What am I in this proof. I’m mute and I barter at the door,
and let us not be weary in
well doing, for in due season we shall reap.

Nor is uncircumcision anything, this is the
counterbalancing assertion, for neither is
circumcision anything, I’m untouchable like a distant
diamond sky, I’m not

insubordinate in the service of the enemies of bigotry and
narrowness.
The confounding calm shatters
fear, complacency. We restrain ourselves from each

encroaching on the other. Was anyone called circumcised.
Let him not renounce
his circumcision. Anyone been called in uncircumcision.
Let him not be circumcised.

It’s like poison to me not to triumph in debate or even to
leave the wrangling
incomplete.

Fortunato Salazar lives in West Hollywood; his recent writing can be found at PEN America, Conjunctions, Tin House, Mississippi Review, Asymptote, The Brooklyn Rail, and elsewhere.
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About Posit Editor

Susan Lewis (susanlewis.net) is the Editor-in-chief and founder of Posit (positjournal.com) and the author of ten books and chapbooks, including Zoom (winner of the Washington Prize), Heisenberg's Salon, This Visit, and State of the Union. Her poetry has appeared in anthologies such as Walkers in the City (Rain Taxi), They Said (Black Lawrence Press), and Resist Much, Obey Little (Dispatches/Spuyten Duyvil), as well as in journals such as Agni, Boston Review, The Brooklyn Rail, Conjunctions online, Diode, Interim, New American Writing, and VOLT.