Victor “Kat” Hernandez

“You Sound, White?”

After Allison Joseph

You don’t sound like my friends 

She said on my end

The ones we shared in our games

I knew their voices all the same

Attuned with my whiteness

Worn like a gaudy dress

My voice is now a color

One who is now other

I look toward my mother

No matter how much I love her

An insurmountable mountain

Echoes of a language louden

My mind heavily colonized

Already distant from my ancestral line

My culture came after

After the indigenous and the grafters

From those stems

I embrace mixedness to no end

I do not wilt under the sun

I am a voice of a color undone

Limebags

When I spent time there, my rent was paid in limes

No paycheck for ends to meet, but he never minded 

Even if I felt a moral defeat, guilt resided

Shouting and screaming, I expected

Caressing and kisses, were all that left him

He fiddled with my hair, surely his sign of affection

It left me warm and anxious, even into the early dawn

Where the sun slammed sedans, I was a helpless lamb

Where the balcony reeked of weed, I knew I was surely free

Where I help however I can, even when he doesn’t demand

Where a bag of chips paid for with extra dimes

Always came with a bag of limes.