Current
Issue
Volume 12.2
Isaac Salazar
2025 Michelle Boisseau Poetry Prize Finalist
—
Rainbow
August 18, 2025
A rainbow appears on La Porte Freeway
November 11, 2025
The Supreme Court disregards the case against same-sex marriage
Stranger, you thought you’d seen the last of me,
but nature has an understudy:
I am only its reflection bending toward you.
A rainbow is a wound taught to shimmer.
A wound is a window taught to forget who broke it.
Many think I’m miraculous,
or sky’s brief jewelry. A corridor of color that ends
in everything, or a pot no one has ever held.
A pot that, sometimes, resembles the empty mouth
of someone, not-devout, praying for a different sentence.
Clouds make and unmake me like clouds. Their seams open like garlic clove,
and suddenly I am only a theory
of light on the freeway’s shoulders.
Stranger, I want to live forever,
but my body is weather, a secret the sky informs
itself before disappearing.
And when I vanish I will leave a small cut in the air.
A cut where another rainbow
is already rehearsing your name.
Bio Copy here
