corto
-/-/-
his mother marinates him in cookie dough and julieta venegas he dances folclórico around
the periphery of her uterus greasy, ungrooved footprints leaving manchas as he goes
golpe golpe golpe
a little bundle of old atoms takes a newer shape
;
they say that trotsky lived for days after the incident slender blade poking out of softened
skull like birthday candle fue de esta manera that the boy continued forward towards
the ledge, hungry for that revolution permanent he dies somewhere beautiful
that is a lie his arm holds plentiful space for pink bird silhouettes but the stone has but
space for one more this is not it every time his heart contracts he wriggles the
ice pick out of trotsky’s balding head and
begins
the climb
-/-/-
Ren Koppel Torres is a Jewish Chicano teen and the editor-in-chief of Alebrijes Review, a literary magazine dedicated to whimsical, colorful, monstrous art by and for Latinos. Ren served as a member of the inaugural Austin Youth Poet Laureate cohort (2021-2022), working to promote poetry and civic engagement within the Austin community. He currently works as a poetry editor for the interdisciplinary arts collective INKSOUNDS and a Community Events Organizer for the LGBT+ literary magazine the winnow. Named a winner of the 2022-2023 National Poetry Quarterly, Ren’s work is published or forthcoming in diode, TIMBER Journal, Lumiere Review, COUNTERCLOCK, Writer’s Digest, and elsewhere. He is currently writing a soup-themed chapbook of poetry.