Mario Duarte
​Image by Miss Pueblos Magicos from Pexels                                                                                        
Mario Duarte is a Mexican American writer and a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop. His poems and short stories have appeared in Aaduna, The Abstract Elephant Magazine, American Writers Review, Digging Through the Fat, Emerald City, PANK Magazine, Plainsongs, Rigorous, Typishly, and Zone 3. New work is forthcoming in Journal X, and Native Skin.
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Love Starts


with us, links us into a chain.
            Dear Ricardo, in the ink dark night
why dream of sun-steaked tears,

or touch, warmth, and tenderness?
             Whipped stars, and an elevator drop
to the streets lie before you now.

Hunger talks, the rest just grunts.
              Your head digs a deeper hole.
Your eyes are scooping sunsets.

Your thoughts spin yellow turnstiles.
             Why hold your holey palms up
or point a finger to the above?

Your lips tear like homemade paper,
             you kiss the hot air goodbye.
Why not walk the block. Surf the air.

You debate a dead purple worm
             at the bottom of a puddle 
losing the torrid argument.

Chrome truck rims revolve in reverse.
              Still, love starts with you, Ricardo,
even on a dead-end street.

Time to return home. Move on.
             Pick up that pebble by the creek.
Watch it walk off. Three giant steps.