Alaska Made Me Salivate

By Christian Hanz Lozada

​Exit signs were printed on goldenrod,
posted in every classroom message board,
haloed by pulled and twisted staples.
 
The bottom was frayed with a phone number
and nothing else on each tassel, as if needing
more information meant this wasn’t for you.
 
The paper was crisp in spring, when the sun was out
and my head was filled with maths: no studying =
another shift. Summer off = 40+ hours a week
 
x $7.25 an hour. Income = freedom.
But there was this exit sign on goldenrod
promising work in Alaskan canneries.
 
Room and board were paid. $15 an hour when
anything over $7 was a career. Every time I saw it,
I snatched the number, afraid it would go away
 
before I could say yes. But I never called.
Generational trauma overrides mathematical logic,
and I am more cautious of bosses than numerical
 
and monetary absence. And my blood remembers
work lines shoulder-to-shoulder, subtraction-by-addition
paychecks, and the ache to curl your fingers
 
around the blade before, sometimes,
losing them and the permanent
two-fingered hellos after.

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Going to Find Gold

By Christian Hanz Lozada

​Stoking my White fire is watching survival and gold-hunting shows,
the ones where racing against governmental fishing deadlines
or season changes that make work impossible is the backdrop
to a gentleman’s bet on accumulated wealth. I get swept up
in manifest destiny and don’t tread on me and finally recognizing
what bootstraps look like: a backhoe that I would at best
have to rent and at worst would empty accounts to buy and break
on the concrete patch in my backyard, leaving it to rust
in the auto museum: a collection of cars aging toward vintage
while ain’t a single one of them works. My auto museum is just
down the road from White Uncle’s boating museum where
you can see his ship turned barnacles-up surrounded by a collection
of operable but unused crab traps. If we were smart we’d merge
operations. But I can imagine shaking hands at the start
and the end of the season with some dude I’ll never like but
do respect because he, like the head image of me, has a firm grip
on what it means to own this shit: have cameras follow your tribulations
and watch the heart pump frustration into your dirty White face
as you bark orders at the dirtier White faces and the rando of color
whose family showed up before the map or who rode the tide
of working whispers to land in the boonies, a Filipino word,
don’t you know, because that’s how you see my home. Maybe
it’s not White fire or rage that I feel, watching these shows, maybe
it’s my mind knowing that we have free will to choose, but the choices
are limited and stretch mostly as far as family and skin,
and if you have seen mine, that’s not very far at all.

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Your dog is something

By Christian Hanz Lozada

I never want to read about,
but all the personifying we do
makes the dog and the dream
a reflection of ourselves,
 
and all I see in her limps
on a broken front leg
and no hind hips, gasping
from the strain of her weight
and momentum, is me
 
limping to life’s finish line
and weirdly hoping I somehow slow
or, at best, have someone
looking over me to say
There are more bad days
 
than good, and it’s time.
I hope someone strokes my hair
as I go to sleep and whispers
sorry and it’s okay and I love you
I’m sorry and
            it’s okay and
                         I love you.

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Being There is Fluid

By Christian Hanz Lozada

​My coworker and I talk story about aging:
she takes care of her mother and I watch Brown Dad
from 25.5 miles away on surface streets
or 29.5 miles away via freeways. I describe
accidental FaceTimes filled with apologies
stuttered and connected to nothing
and White Mom’s interpretations of them.
 
My coworker tells her mom’s friend to send an email
next time they make a date since Mom will forget.
So he sent a test email, saying “we had a good lunch,
and I hope you liked the sesame ball Mom brought you.”
 
Mom had, of course, forgotten to gift it,
so my coworker dug it out of the purse,
cupped the grease-splotched napkin,
pinched and separated stray seeds
from lint and change, and tossed the evidence
into the trash, not from ingratitude but from
fearing what her tongue would taste.

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Café Nada
​

By Christian Hanz Lozada

​I built a bar in my backyard, and every afternoon I sit
with dogs at my feet and chickens hunting. I bother
the neighbors with my loud, hipster vinyl: male voices
with too much vibrato to be read as vulnerable but
trying hard or crooning ladies dripping confidence
and cool through double standards and vulnerability.
Every day, I occupy a stool, drink alone, and wax writing
with Bukowski who deads down the street. Sometimes
Hemingway comes to visit and talk of nothing in this space.
 
Like scrolling through other peoples’ vacation pictures,
I look at the seat next to me and the patio benches I built
surrounding the bar, I imagine the friends who could fill
the seats if I gave half a shit much less two. But it’s a lie.
The bar is true, as is the music and the empty chairs,
the dogs, and chickens who lay too many eggs
for one body to eat. Drinking alone is true, too,
but not because I feel better about people when
they’re not around but because I give all the shits
and that weighs on arteries and aortas more heavily
than a regular drunk.

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How to Soothe an Itchy Palm
​

By Christian Hanz Lozada

​Some days my palms are itchy,
and I hope I haven’t cut my nails,
but even they won’t dig deep enough
into my life and wealth lines, so I use
my two front teeth to get into the gaps.
I know this, too, will not settle the itch.
 
It’s an Asian sign, Brown Dad said.
You’re going to be lucky. You should
bet it all. And he soothes his itch
on lottery tickets. When he had no money,
he’d borrow at least $10 a week—five for
Wednesday, five for Saturday—debt
 
to scratch. When he’d win, like a pusher,
he’d give his kids a taste: $20 each
to pay forward and get back
he’d say, but in some Cebuano word
I didn’t recognize but also heard him use
to describe letting the poor steal from you.
 
But my palms still itch, and I have a partner
who doesn’t understand how nails and teeth
and awkwardly angled backscratchers
offer nothing that $10 twice a week does.
She doesn’t understand how Asian-serving
casinos let you openly bet on the itchiness
 
of another player’s hand, knowing that we
have learned both capitalism and community.

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​Christian Hanz Lozada aspires to be like a cat, a creature that doesn’t care about the subtleties of others and who will, given time and circumstance, eat their owner. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart Prize nominated poetry has appeared in journals from five continents and counting. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.