DOM BLANCO

A Triptych of Found Photos in Abuela Geysa’s Bedroom Closet

1.

Diaper pokes
above the blue
bathing
suit. I interrogate the ground,

drilling
into a shoreline no one told me
was manufactured.
Behind me
strangers

claim
lounge chairs; beyond, the white
ridge of
South Beach monoliths.

2.

Closer
to shore, where the tide yanks back,
my face
is the ribbed underside of a seashell.

Nearby,
a mother and son thrash
on green
rafts, blind to my alarm.

In the offing, silhouettes
cast lines
into the Atlantic. My dread
refuses
the hook, can’t be lured.

3.

Erase
the strangers. Sever the ground.
A frame
of suffocated clouds. My face

anchors the
tension
like
seashells sifted from the tide, I wonder

was it ever
necessary—the low, slow
helicopter
in the top right

it sutures
the coast, stalking me, blurred
in heat with
no end

to the glare
of memory.

---

Dom Blanco is a Cuban American poet from Miami, Florida, now based in Bloomingdale, Illinois. He is the author of Querencia: An Autoethnography, winner of the 2026 Paul Nemser Prize (forthcoming from Lily Poetry Review Books in 2027). A Blackburn Fellow and graduate of the MFA program at Randolph College, his work has appeared in MĀNOA Journal (Architectures of FuturoPasados), The Brooklyn Review, Huizache, Latin@ Literatures, and elsewhere. When not writing, he can be found basking in the sun like a meerkat or embarking on daily walks that lead nowhere.