After Iris De Anda’s “girls who fly with crows”

I want a thing.
I want the crows
in the area to know
me. I want my toes,
dipped in the ocean,
to call sea turtles.
I want my heart
to be the bass
to heaven’s
harmonies
rather than
just imagine it.

I want to know
these ghost
cigarettes left
on my porch
are from my dead
sister and not
some 5150
recently released
from the hospital
a block over,

the one where
I visited her,
where machines—
filtering radioactive,
cancerous blood—
kept time
with the musicals
we were supposed
to watch while
she dozed.

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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 and Best of the Net nominated poetry have been published all over the world, including in Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry Review, and Emerson Review. 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.