Check out this moving piece from Lin Flores, a poem about family, inconsistent parenting, and the aftermath it leaves behind.

A Mexican Mountain by Lin Flores

After Jericho Brown

A Mexican mountain is my home.

It stains and scars and forms to stone.

            Promises stain and scar and form from stone:

            My picture papí swear land and a brick house.

My ghost papí swears land and a brick house.

He was a dreamer and a dog, delirious as tío.

            A dad and a dog, delirious as tío.

            Unreliable like a rainstorm, he’d go years without a call.

Hope for a rainstorm relies on just one call—

Like a sister’s suicide threat & six years later

            Like my sister’s suicide threat & six years later.

            No suicide attempt survives without the scars in years.

None of the scarred became suicides after those years.

A Mexican mountain is my home.

Lin Flores (she/they) lives and works in SLC, UT as a full-time poet and creative writing student. They are enrolled in the online Creative Writing Masters Program at the University of New Orleans. Lin published her first chapbook, Reflections While Living in Utah, in 2020. This work quickly became a local best seller, making it the most sold book at Utah’s first LBGTQ bookstore—Under The Umbrella. When Flores isn’t coaching high school poetry slam, she is volunteering her time at Encircle, an LGBTQ resource center in SLC. Flores loves art, music, history, donuts, and God.

You can follow Lin at Lincpoetry.com and on Insta at @LincPoetry.