ISSUE 10 FEATURE

HOSPEDAJE
Edgar Kunz

Morning in Moyogalpa. Alleys flush
            with orchids, wax-leafed guapinol,
                        early light. In the hostel where cops

take the loud corner girls, leave
            without paying, I wake slow, my chest
                        a rash of bites. Remembering

the night before: bottles of Flor de Caña,
            a slick plywood table, the ruined English
                        of a man’s confession: En Managua,

I am shooting un hombre en the head.
            Jabbing a thumb at his temple. Everyone
                        looking away. I wander thirsty

into the street, sun hammering down hard.
            A deer, brown with white marks, presses
                        bold against me. Three months and I am wild

to be touched. The deer’s tongue
            scraping salt from my arm. That strange
                        tenderness against me.

Closing my eyes. Leaning into it.

Edgar Kunz is a Wallace Stegner Fellow at Stanford University. His work can be found in AGNI, New England Review, The Missouri Review, Narrative, Gulf Coast, the Best New Poets series, and other places. His writing has been supported by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, the Academy of American Poets, and Vanderbilt University, where he earned an MFA. He lives in San Francisco.