Dimitri Reyes

Dimitri Reyes is a Puerto Rican multidisciplinary artist, content creator, organizer, and educator from Newark, New Jersey. He has organized large-scale poetry events such as #PoetsforPuertoRicoNewark and read at venues such as The Dodge Poetry Festival, Split This Rock, Busboys and Poets, and the American Poetry Museum. Dimitri's forthcoming book, Every First and Fifteenth is the winner of the Digging Press 2020 Chapbook Award. Other work is published or forthcoming in Vinyl, Kweli, Entropy, Duende, Cosmonauts, Obsidian, and Acentos. He is the Marketing & Communications Director at CavanKerry Press and is an Artist-in-Residence with the New Jersey Performing Arts Center. Learn more about Dimitri by visiting his website at dimitrireyespoet.com

Ode to the MacDonald's by My House

Your drive thru was the first back I ever leaned into

while I learned to speak niceties clear and slow.

Where my eyes became attracted to the glow 

of the arch you were my first real crush, the first ex 

to damage my insides.

Never did I discriminate between

play date and play place and every Saturday

I remember how you made me feel, crackling warmth

verbatim, through a speakerbox,

   Hello.

   Can I take your order?

   Do you want fries with that?

Behind my missing baby tooth, all I could say was yes.

   Yes, please.

A Brown Boy High-School Narrative Set to the Twilight Saga 

                        Empty chapters for a pen 

pricking myself on personality 

that existed in the pages of a book or screen. 

Sprouted from roots  

            I wore my hair like Jacob Black                

                        and craved barbarian. 

            Having dreams where I cried

into my own chest—  

            selling a heart in my hands  

            to another self      thin- 

            like strands of hair braided  |

            in the heat of        

            1 little, 2 little, 3 little  

indian boy songs 

            that lulled me to a nursery rhyme sleep. 

Into the thickness of gratitude 

            I told my friends  

            I switched to team werewolf  

            because being an indian boy    

now made me a cute boy for 4 more movies. 

Hollywood taught me ritual skin,       

            not white enough to be a vampire, 

                        caramel & coppertone became the yearning     

            attraction of a wild life.   

            My largest organ of little indian boy      

                        bound fiction to fact.                                         

                                    Commercialism skin 

            to be a teen dream     

                        absent of stubble on my chin  

                                    wearing a clean shave like war paints. 

                                    For my fifteenth birthday 

                        I autographed my candles   

                        with my indigenous name:           

                                    Come Mierda 

not Taino nor native 

just Narcissus in the language         

                        of a lost tribe. 

This mop at the peak of my body 

                                    was pop culture silo        

            a Hot Topic headdress  

                         a stockpile of smooth walks        

                         and silky locks paying service        

                         to a God-silver screen