National Championship
When the college star quarterback suffered a separated shoulder in the first
half of the prestigious bowl game named after an acidic citrus fruit and not
a fresh, scented flower, he bowed down, planted his hands on his knees and
wilted, realizing his first-team all-everything year would not have a hero’s
ending. When the young back-up quarterback was grabbed by his facemask,
pulled into the grizzled face of the head coach and told, Just go in and have
some fun, everyone knew what would happen. How many of us could take
the reins leading the team to victory at seconds notice? March our team down
the field for the winning score, ignoring the pressure suddenly saddled upon
our shoulder pads. Someday the young back-up blitzed from his blindside,
tackled into the earth’s entrails for four uneven quarters will be a star, parading
around the campus pecs protruding, conducting post-game interviews thanking
his lineman for giving him such good protection. His mom for driving him to
Pop Warner and sitting in the bleachers all those years. And God for allowing
him to excel at a game he loves. But this was today. And the other team had
bigger, badder lineman, brutes nasty enough to eat their mothers whole spitting
out their seeds, ensuring no nice bones from the family tree would ever grow
in their bodies, probably pretty goddamn good at it.
________________________
Like Flowers and Martyrs
I.
In West Virginia he is strapping on a vest.
The back is shiny.
The front is a color he’d call gay
(because everything not preferable at 16 is
automatically christened homosexual).
But it matches his date’s dress,
and because her va-va-voom
top of the pyramid pom-pom
ra-ra-ra-sis-boom-ba body
causes him to cheer, profess his love
every time she gets undressed,
he does what he’s told,
a self-imposed servant to burgeoning breasts.
II.
In the West Bank they are strapping a vest to him.
The back digs into his soul.
The front is what boys his age put up
when they have been hurt,
or are about to die.
They kiss his cheek goodbye, leave him alone:
to confirm each explosive in place
that rest between the ridges in his ribcage.
To mutter last words because his upper lip
stutters at the sudden stare
of a sacred pilgrimage.
To pull the chord,
a self-imposed enemy.
He does what he’s told Jihad rebel with a cause,
and a confiscated identity.
III.
Someday you’ll rip open the pouch;
pour the seeds into your palm
and spread them lovingly into the Earth
as if sprinkling the best parts of you
into the entrails of your unborn children.
Someday you’ll be a corsage
delicately wrapped around the limp wrist
of a debutante dolled in daffodil
for a super sweet sixteen,
or the boutonniere fastened in a sharp lapel
at a homecoming dance in a gym swimming
in crepe paper.
Or someday you’ll be lamenting life,
just another flower
flung at dirtside memorial
where a father’s head just blew off.
deuce coupe 
Daniel Romo teaches high school creative writing, and lives in Long Beach, CA. He has recently been published in Chantrelle’s Notebook, Underground Voices Magazine, apt, and The Citron Review. He is an MFA candidate in poetry at Antioch University, and thinks gray sky the utmost inspiration. More of his writing can be found at Peyote Soliloquies.