Pretty Hate Caffeine


I am the average citizen
on a warm night
like a revolver after opening fire
when the cracks in the ceiling
form the map of suffocation

I am the average citizen
and I am more afraid
of hunger
than failure.

I am the knuckles that bang on the windows of Seven Eleven
              at four o’clock in the morning

the feeling of fucking with strangers

I listen to the iPod on shuffle because I don’t dare to
control anything
my parents taught me
not to settle with
being a loser
my parents taught me
to be a good loser

I am afraid of the dogs
that throw themselves against the bars
when they hear my steps.
I have gingivitis and I have
two hundred of the Beatles greatest hits
in MP3 format.

I am the average citizen
I feel suspicious
in the banks
in the airports

the house I grew up in is now
a Starbucks chain

I have a lot of fictitious lives
I use to hail taxis
I sniff the socks
after wearing them

I have something of a medical proof
some
monkey thrown into space

I am the average citizen
and I have no emergency exit.

Customer Service


If life is not the fabric softener commercial
that you were promised as a child

Press 1

If your anguish is a Voltron formed by
five smaller anguishes

Press 2

If blood-stained panties caused
a crack in reality

Press 3

If your favorite monsters are Godzilla
and Michael Jackson

Press 4

If you want to judge the living as well as the dead
              please stay on the line

your call may be recorded to ensure
quality of service

Learn to Burn Bridges


In the sixteenth year of my life I discovered
that I would never be Travis from Taxi Driver
that at most I would be the red light
of the traffic signal that wastes your time

I learned that you have to have the character
for heroism
or be overly imbecilic

I wanted to be like the bureaucrats and astronauts
letting the years pass through a pane of glass

but I have the metabolism of a reptile and it’s my turn
to see both sides
of many coins

I’m the bad mother
the poor daughter of the poor father
and so
because the instructions came in Czech
I’m a car bomb
making way for pedestrians

Abandon the House


it was like turning off the buzz
of an electronic device

stop looking at the world
through a mosquito net

Ánuar Zúñiga Naime (Mexico City, 1982). He is the author of the books Sector 7-G, el metabolismo de los reptiles, Pretty hate caffeine, and Fortune cookie. His work has appeared in the journals Eme Equis, Escala, Low-Fi Ardentia, Playboy Mexico, and others. Since 2009 he has been part of the multimedia poetry collective Los KFGC.
Zachary Jensen is a writer, journalist, educator and translator. He is the founding editor of the journal Angel City Review as well as the editor for the animals chapbook series from Business Bear Press. His work has appeared in Pank, Entropy, Circulo De Poesia, Dispatches From the Poetry Wars, the San Diego Reader, and other places.
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