Michelle Brittan Rosado – Picture Window at the Beginning of Shutdown, March 2020

Michelle Brittan Rosado

Picture Window at the Beginning of Shutdown, March 2020

the three-year-old follows 
with his eyes the garbage 
trucks traveling left to right

hauling the last of our moving 
boxes and the mail carrier’s white 
van idling across the street

and the construction 
crew on schedule to peel back 
the street down to its striations 

of rock and concrete and pour new 
asphalt back over like a chalkboard 
wiped clean of words 

Author’s note: The poems in this series all use the image of a window as their starting point, some in the title itself and others more peripherally. I’ve been thinking of this symbol a lot lately — as a portal for wonder in childhood, an aperture to others’ lives during the pandemic, a view of the world outside after giving birth and spending those early days indoors. These poems may not have come into existence without the invitation to contribute to The Fresno 15, and I am endlessly grateful to the MFA program for my years there and the deep sense of community I’ve carried with me since graduating in 2011. Thank you for reading and for supporting the Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship. 

Steven Sanchez – Pinwheel

Steven Sanchez

Pinwheel

My dog stops to smell
the silver pinwheel
a little girl planted
in the flowerbed
by the staircase
that connects
my apartment
to three others.
It’s become Tux’s favorite
flower, its folded
plastic petals spinning,
sunlight glinting
on his wet black nose.
He never marks his territory
here, never raises his leg
to claim this as his,
unlike the way he claimed
my foot the other week
when we had visitors,
or the way he claimed
this apartment the night
we moved in.  This pinwheel
has been here for months,
bloomed in winter,
and fell down
after every storm. 
And neighbors always
fix it, strangers
I’ve never talked to:
the man on the second story
who works the nightshift,
his footsteps going up the stairs
each morning I feed my dog;
the little girl who lives
next door, who loves my dog
even though he chased her
into her living room once
when I forgot to shut the door
(she still tells her grandma
Look! That’s the dog. I want
to pet him, but he’s mean.);
the older couple who moved
in a few weeks ago
with Texas license plates,
they greeted me
in Spanish, reminding me
of everything I don’t know
how to say.  This winter
more men have been shot,
dark like me.  Police found
a man face down in a canal.
His death was ruled
an accidental drowning.
He was on his school’s
water polo team.
He kissed men.
My boyfriend’s morning
jog was interrupted—
he matched a suspect’s
description. This winter,
after class one morning,
my students waited to talk.
They asked if their votes
mattered.  Another said
she couldn’t vote.
Another said she’s
the only person
with citizenship
in her family.  Again,
I was reminded of everything
I don’t know how to say.
I love this pinwheel,
the way my dog stops
to sniff it every morning
and night, the way strangers
care for it—even a person
I’ve never seen before
stopped and reattached
the silver wheel to its stem
after the wind blew it off.
When kids bend down
and exhale their breath
into its silver ribbon,
I remember that sometimes,
we don’t have to say anything.

Michelle Brittan Rosado – Evening Walk, 2020

Michelle Brittan Rosado

Evening Walk, 2020

The night gardener’s watering 
              concentrates on the roses’ 
shadows. A coyote, starved 
              by summer, lowers 
his head to the gutter.
              An invisible constellation
of points measuring six feet 
              extends from everything:
the web spun from windowsill 
              to banister, flickering 
under the porch light.

Author’s note: The poems in this series all use the image of a window as their starting point, some in the title itself and others more peripherally. I’ve been thinking of this symbol a lot lately — as a portal for wonder in childhood, an aperture to others’ lives during the pandemic, a view of the world outside after giving birth and spending those early days indoors. These poems may not have come into existence without the invitation to contribute to The Fresno 15, and I am endlessly grateful to the MFA program for my years there and the deep sense of community I’ve carried with me since graduating in 2011. Thank you for reading and for supporting the Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship. 

Steven Sanchez – Meet Me at the Gay Denny’s Part 3

Steven Sanchez

Meet Me at the Gay Denny’s Part 3

14 years ago, after a trip to a haunted house and hay ride, I came out to my closest friends in a Denny’s because I was in my first relationship and wanted to share that part of my life with them. We were sitting at the Denny’s in Selma, I squeezed my (at the time) boyfriend’s hand under the table and said, “ Hey everyone. Jake and I are together.” I lifted our hands up and the first thing somebody said was “JAKE’S GAY?!” 

Not the reaction I was expecting, but it could have been worse. 

Jake lived in Fresno, I lived in Hanford, and neither of us felt safe telling our parents. So, whenever we had a chance to be together, we went to Denny’s A LOT since it was open 24 hours. We went so often we became friends with one of our servers, Mary (she eventually became a manager). We also became friends with the head manager, Marilyn. I think they both knew how nervous I was (maybe Jake, too), and they’d let us sit in the section that was closed off whenever we wanted.

It was at this Denny’s, in those sometimes closed off sections, that I got to practice being Queer in public—I practiced looking at him intently and giggling, practiced rubbing my foot against his leg, even practiced holding his hand when I was feeling especially brave. That Denny’s became the first place I felt safe to be Queer in public. 

Even after Jake and I went our own ways, I still used Denny’s to hang out with my gay friends after drinking at Legends, or to sometimes meet guys from Grindr (I know, I know, a Denny’s pitstop isn’t the norm for a hookup, but as a baby gay, if we could meet at Denny’s first, it made me feel a little bit more at ease about the whole thing.) I even met somebody at a Denny’s who I ended up being in a relationship with for 8 years. 

If Queer time really is a circle, then it’s told by the analog clock above the cash register in every single Denny’s.

Michelle Brittan Rosado – Every Window Filled with Trees

Michelle Brittan Rosado

Every Window Filled with Trees

I climb the wooden 
staircase 
to the backhouse 
built above 
the garages 
and I’m here 
at the level 
of the treetops 
thinking of 
Dickinson’s line 
about the gambrels 
of the sky 
and then remember 
my ancestors 
walked up carved logs 
to longhouses 
on stilts to outlast 
the floods—
and isn’t it always 
this way, 
some memory deep 
in my bloodline 
at the same time as 
an intimation 
of the western canon,
my body floating 
just feet above 
the earth, like a brain 
perched at the top 
of a spine, a branch 
etching its message 
back and forth
on the glass

Author’s note: The poems in this series all use the image of a window as their starting point, some in the title itself and others more peripherally. I’ve been thinking of this symbol a lot lately — as a portal for wonder in childhood, an aperture to others’ lives during the pandemic, a view of the world outside after giving birth and spending those early days indoors. These poems may not have come into existence without the invitation to contribute to The Fresno 15, and I am endlessly grateful to the MFA program for my years there and the deep sense of community I’ve carried with me since graduating in 2011. Thank you for reading and for supporting the Larry Levis Memorial Scholarship.