Poetry by Christian Hanz Lozada

To the FBI

I’m sorry you made it so easy to steal from you
on a fieldtrip. with students by invitation.
Oh, and thanks for lunch, too!
But I promised the kids I would steal something,
I’m nothing if not honest.

I should say it wasn’t easy, easy,
not with all the cameras.
You almost got me when I snatched a book from the lobby
I’m an English teacher shut up
but I dropped it immediately when a student,
looking up at the ceiling, said,
“there’s a shitload of cameras here.”
My heart sank, thinking 
at best I’d get a pen.

But then you had a gift shop!
a gift shop with an agent as the cashier,
not an eagle-eyed convenience clerk,
and your file on me has to show I know how to handle
a lifetime of profiling
without accusation. 

Like any Home Depot con,
I placed all the small items under the sweatshirt I purchased
your agent rang me up. opened a bag watched me drop
handheld Christmas gifts
like a modern day motherfucking 
Jean Valjean.

Still Afraid of Virginia Woolf

Before the family comes over,
Nani puts my empty toy boxes
under the other recyclables,
stores their contents—the Lego
structures, lightsabers, Transformers, 
and puppets—in the furthestroom, 
on the tallest shelvesto keep them 
from the grubbyhands of fathers, 
the judging eyesof mothers, 
and their children.

In our wedding vows, she said,
“I’ll hide rejection letters
when you are least hopeful.”

She does.

Christian Hanz Lozada’s (he/him) near-accolades include two Pushcart Prize and Best of the Net nominations, runner up in the Blossom Contest for BIPOC writers, and almost dated Super Bowl halftime star Jessica Alba (if an initiated conversation counts). He wrote the poetry collection He’s a Color, Until He’s Not. His poetry has been published worldwide, including in Bamboo Ridge, Cordite Poetry Review, and Emerson Review. Christian has featured at the Autry Museum and Beyond Baroque. He lives in San Pedro, CA and uses his MFA to teach his neighbors and their kids at Los Angeles Harbor College.