Due to the challenges presented by reading poetry on a phone, with the author’s permission we have rendered his two-column poem as a one-column poem.

In order to view the poem as the author intended it to appear, we strongly encourage you to click on this link (which will take you to a two-column PDF): Joseph Anthony

Joseph Anthony
Gregory L. (Goyo) Candela

I am
Joseph
Anthony
Aragon
a coyote.
I speak in tongues.

I don’t need
your goddamned meds.
I eat your food.
I don’t swallow
preaching.

Don’t
hand me
no pity.
Give me
dollars.

I sleep where I want.
I tear, to pieces, your
Albuquerque Journals
scatter them.
Sometimes, I
wipe my ass with

your news
not my news.

I nest in
your alleys
under
stolen
paint tarps.
I leave
cigarette butts
soda cups
and
candy wrappers.

I ain’t afraid
of
the
dark
like you.

I mumble at
everybody. I
don’t talk
with nobody.

I am a coyote.
I speak in tongues.
I scream at
the big moons.

Wrapped in
throw-away
clothes that
smell good

I rest
under thorn
fire
bushes—
no one
crawls
into—

I do.

I burned down
a house
in L.A.
I did not know
my girlfriend
was home
asleep.

—
Gregory L. (Goyo) Candela, a professor emeritus at University of New Mexico, has resided in New Mexico since 1972. Recent publications include poems in Adobe Walls, Malpais Review, Italian Americana, Circes’s Lament, and Weaving the Terrain. In addition, he has authored six produced plays including El Mozo Regresa: The Kid Returns for KUNM’s “Radio Theatre.” His poem “Cementerios de Nuevo Mexico” was nominated for a 2018 Pushcart Prize.

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Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, events, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.