Bloodlines
The doctor asked, How long?
My uncle said, Since I was twelve.
The doctor asked, Every day?
My uncle said, Every Day,
an Every-Day Shit-Facer.
We asked the doctor, How long?
The doctor said, His liver is hardened,
it is at zero, his liver is now a rock,
his liver is no more.
At 94, my abuelo still walks
around with a cane.
The man who hangs out
in the doorway of the pharmacy next door
calls my grandpa immortal.
The four burial plots my grandparents bought
are all full but not with their bodies.
We’re not the type of people who are good
at things like natural order,
things like when to stop drinking.
My grandpa uses his cane
to knock dirt into the grave
of my Tío Pipos, dead at 48.
We don’t understand time –
our blood is just like that.
Olivia Muñoz is a Chicana writer, artist, and educator born and raised in Saginaw, Michigan, to Mexican parents. Her writing has appeared in the Twitter literary journal edited by Chen Chen, The Lickety~Split, San Pedro River Review, Association of Mexican American Educators Journal, About Place Journal, and in No Tender Fences: An Anthology of Immigrant & First-Generation American Poetry. Olivia was selected for the Tin House Winter 2024 Workshop and is the 2024 winner of the Latin American Poetry prize from the Blue Mountain Review, judged by Richard Blanco. She lives on the West Coast.