The Face of
A Question

Miguel slouches in the corner
and searches the room
with his Cuban eyes
thinking that his drawing
of the devil had gone undetected.

Dessie collects things but Shakespeare
is not one of them, simply because
she is sure his words are incomparable
to Russian authors I have not heard of.

Sinh and Sanh are not related and yet
their writing looks the same, with S’s in
predictable places that I am unable to help correct.

Roberto is amazing, stringing words across
the page consistently, but late, every day.

And yet the face of a question is
without race, it cannot
be predicted as it looks down,
then up, before curving around to
say through tears or smiles of frustration,
“I don’t understand.”

Originally published in 1999 | Republished November 28, 2015