This sad brown boy grew up
to be a poet.
Thanks for reading.
He is still taken
with flights of fancy.
His feet wander
as much as his mind.
You can find him on Twitter
or at your mom’s house.
Thanks for reading.
This sad brown boy is now
a dad.
He thinks he understands
all the other dads
that have ever been,
including his own.
He lives with
his wife and their son.
He thanks you for reading.
His mind isn’t filled with thoughts
about the pretty girls from his high school, anymore,
or their smirking boyfriends’
expensive cologne.
Instead, it’s filled with his son, learning
the world one word at a time.
Today, a phonics booklet
showed them how ‘sad’ and ‘dad’
always rhyme. Just like ‘lies’ and ‘apologize’ –
which is to say, he’s sorry
about what he said about your mom before.
He thanks you for reading.
He lives and loves in Queens, New York,
where he appreciates each act of grace.
***
Francisco Delgado is a proud CHamoru and, through his maternal grandmother, a member of the Tonawanda Band of Seneca (Wolf clan). His creative work has appeared in Lost Balloon, Pithead Chapel, JMWW, Wigleaf, and elsewhere, and he is the author of the chapbook, Adolescence, Secondhand (Honeysuckle Press, 2018). He works as an Assistant Professor of English at Borough of Manhattan Community College (CUNY) and lives in Queens with his wife and their son.
***
image: MM Kaufman
Rejection Letters 