Self-Portrait in a Canadian Tuxedo on the Road to St. George, UT

Nothing is new, least of all a world. Empire
litters highways stretched through
a Vegas Costco Gas from a drive-up

Bakersfield ATM: Manifest
Destiny and her loveless slip of strip
malls and western hunger. She and her kin

in the afterlife flesh, roadside pastiche:
Looney Tunes tumbleweeds, settlers’ namesakes
plaqued on stucco cum adobe, gift shops

in the shape of covered wagons, fascist
campaign slogans, my Lolo’s face
I divine from the mountain.

I wear olive green boots. I can’t button my jeans
as high up on my waist as I once did
and they tear in the places where thighs kiss.

Like my forefathers in vinegar-stained
shirtfronts before me, vulgar lidded
eyes crested on the mouth of a beer bottle,

the coil of time tightened fast in my shape.
I fold considering what it might mean
to know in the past tense, I was here.

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antmen pimentel mendoza (she, he) (@antmenismagic) is the author of the chapbook My Boyfriend Apocalypse (Nomadic Press, 2023). antmen is a writer, the Acting Co-Director of the Multicultural Community Center at UC Berkeley, and a student at the Rainier Writing Workshop at Pacific Lutheran University. His poetry is published or forthcoming in Underblong, Peach Mag, A Velvet Giant, and Gigantic Sequins. Find antmen online at antmenpm.com or riding her bike in Oakland, CA.