I Love Everything Inside This Mug of Coffee
for Miles, & after Chen Chen and Jane Wong
like the way you make it
so sweet I have no choice
but to drink it slowly, slowly,
& admire the fire of us two years in.
Nearly two years since I stopped
using cheap beer as a replacement
for psychiatry. I know sipping café
this slowly is bad for teeth but
I just want to enjoy this Modern
Baseball vinyl with you before
I have to work, want to stay
on the couch & forget Texas
wants us dead. I love us
in all our transness & queerness
& weirdness. I like to think
most Texans love us in all our
transness queerness weirdness.
Texans who know that it was
not Texas before imperialism.
This cafecito is less fuerte than
Welita makes it and I don’t know
what my ancestors drank or spoke
antes de español. Sometimes
when I write poems, I see
genderless ancestors doing the same
before pen and paper. Before colonizers.
Before broken treaties. Before shame.
Before this cup of coffee.
SG Huerta (they/he) is a queer Xicanx writer from Dallas. They are the author of the chapbooks The Things We Bring with Us (Headmistress Press) and Last Stop (Defunkt Magazine). Their work has appeared or is forthcoming in The Offing, Split Lip Magazine, Infrarrealista Review, and elsewhere. They live in Texas with their partner and two cats. Find them at sghuertawriting.com or on Twitter @sg_poetry.
