Definitely Someone I Have Never Seen
BY CHRISTIAN HANZ LOZADA.
On my first night in the Philippines,
Light-skinned Cousin dropped me
at Brown Uncle’s house after midnight,
and I opened the gate nodding
at the armed security guard
who’s probably Brown Dad’s cousin
or boyhood friend but definitely someone
I have never seen before
and who has never seen me.
Aside from the gate and the security guard,
there are no locks on the doors, and I end
my first night in socks padding down
dark wood stairs to my tatami-matted
basement room and fall asleep on a futon
wondering: is this what it’s like to be White,
to have all the doors lockless and slightly ajar,
where the only things barring you are decency
and the sheer drop off the ladder?
Mixed-Race at a Heiau
BY CHRISTIAN HANZ LOZADA.
As the taker
of the loose
and unwatched,
I know enough
not to snatch
stray rocks
from the heiau,
the temple,
where iron,
mud or old blood
stains the volcanic
a powdery red
because my hands
are brown enough
to know theft must
be quick,
because my hands
are white enough
to know
real taking
must be slow
and on paper.
Guided Pathways
BY CHRISTIAN HANZ LOZADA.
At work, we tell these young adults to pick a path
and stick with it to a degree and a career,
but I don’t remember a kind of person I wanted to be,
just jobs that could wear out my soul in tolerable ways.
I didn’t see any sort of future until Nani
saw pictures of me as a child and fawned over how cute
I was with my so-big smile tucking my chin into my neck
as if happiness can stun, always wearing a sweater
that made me itch and sweat because my parents thought
they looked good on me.
Christian Hanz Lozada aspires to be like a cat, a creature that doesn’t care about the subtleties of others and who will, given time and circumstance, eat their owner. He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominated poetry have been published all over the world, including in Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry Review, and Emerson Review. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College. You can find him on Instagram @poetloz.