CHRISTIAN LOZADA

AWAY.

From his seat on the pier facing Long Beach, Monster could see the Queen Mary and the white
dome where the Spruce Goose used to be. Once a year, Brown Dad would drag him, White
Brother, and Brown Brothers through the dome to watch footage of the Goose’s amazing six-foot
flight or whatever it was and then awe at a giant, flightless plane housed next to a boat concreted
in place. Monster looked at the streaking scabs peeking out from his right sleeve and then at the
clouds riding the wind inland and away.

He wanted that.

YOU CAN’T SEE DEATH UNTIL YOU DO

The joy of playing the lottery
is the known desires and needs
coupled with statistical impossibilities.

Hop in a car and ignore
the probabilities of accidents
and injuries but feel itchy palms
on the cracking steering wheel.

The true joy of life is a switch
you turn off and on:
on: this adventure is foolish and fun
off: I’ll probably die on this drive

on this drive, on this drive,
before I bit the doughnut I bought
with a dime hope. Past experiences
tell you how it’s going to end

until they don’t, but that brief,
glorious moment is enough
to convince you, for a second,
that death isn’t coming.

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 authored the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not and co-authored Leave with More Than You Came With. His poems have appeared in journals from California to Australia with stops in Hawaii, Korea, and the United Kingdom. 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.