I don’t know what to tell you -
Morning breaks over
me and I can not
reach for the hot glass without 
hand-shake. You offer yours,
but how do I grasp back
without alarming you to my inherit rigidity? 
Hello, I'm trying to do my best
Work with the Shapes inside me, okay?
I can't always be responsible for my sharpness
& I need to know if I've hurt you.
I'm trying, trying to make me
A better person through the Soft 
Dad-hands of my Barber and I can't 
let him see me cry yet, oh. 
He scrapes the bristle from my 
throat and I am so thankful
For my mug so smooth, ravaged,
Winter-cold with menthol upon my quick leaving. 

There's an inherent violence to all of this
I think gazing out over a fleeting 
New Hampshire. Windowside, I am 
seduced by the gut-heavy blue.
           Kiss me on my big spiny mouth, Nashua!
 Stop me if this turns you on but
       What is God's whole omnipotent, Deal?
Does the plan read to till my 
Spirit or are my roots just coming up?
I hear the whining, but won’t call back I am sure. 
I'll get to it in time 
and in time - even more so.
I didn’t pay $12 to be alone on this bus
but I don't get to choose anyone, ever.
Not even the light I return to.
Not even when to wake, really. 
I'm trying, trying
so hard all the time 
to not let my body harbor debt
without consent, but when I wake 
coins spill off of me 
        - peel off my back and dance away through the kitchen.  
I crush an egg into the pan
A smaller sun over a small sun 
and I get to keep living most
uncertain of the cracks in things.
Promises still get made 
      And time makes them into
             angry ransom letters - this hurts me,
but I vow to never eat cheese again
in daylight. 
I eat a whole pizza in the dark
and Finally weep one morning
at a single tree erupting 
with birds who Twist and Burst
into the soft bashful sky -
What a gift!
What a relief it would be to
be simply broken & 
Yet I still remain
so wildly,
And dangerously whole!

John-Francis Quiñonez is a Desert Flower & Current Resident of Providence, Educator, Provider of Accessible Aide as Your Queer Mawm, and Poet./////Truly just a Queer, Latinx Wild Thing on the Hunt for Candy almost Always.////Has a handful of Poems in Maps for Teeth, Yellow Chair Review, Voicemail Poems, Drunk in a Midnight Choir, and Slamfind///Is trying their best not to talk too much about Rock and Roll or Fruit Bats, but Promises Nothing.

Howard Hodgkin was born in London and studied at Camberwell School of Art, London and at Bath Academy of Art, Corsham, where he subsequently taught. Hodgkin's paintings may look abstract but are always based on specific events, usually an encounter between people. They are painterly evocations of a remembered moment rather than a literal representation. He began painting on board in the 1970s and on a large scale in the late 1980s. He won the Turner Prize in 1985 and was knighted in 1992.