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Lucas Restivo is a writer from San Diego by way of Boston. He loves the abstract and finds inspiration from the collective individualism of DIY communities. His poem desert daydreams can be found in his first collection of poetry if i could take your hand i could shake your hand. He hopes others can find their own meaning in his work and be inspired to learn something new.

desert daydreams

Lucas Restivo

phoenix in my veins and tempe in my brain

i’m passing out in the walmar parking lot

i smoke myself to sleep and blame it on the heat

because my father apologizes for the gifts he’s given me:

he knows nothing is free

and my slogan speak might just be good gratuity for a difficult order

my mother dreams of stopping bullets with her feet

it makes sense to me

i want to see beyond treetop skies and the buildings embalming i-95

beyond passports and paths and paper mache structures

i want to see every piece in the mosaic

no fuck the goddamn f**king dickhead bigger picture

in 8th grade mr. lusas put us into teams

each with the same amount of paper clips and bolts and popsicle sticks

with the goal to build the slowest falling parachute out of a grocery bag

my team resurrected market basket pterodactyl wings

and i raced it to the top of the stairs

the winning team just put the supplies in the bag and dropped it and let them all fall out

because the rules never said you couldn’t

now mr. lusas waves the buses in and out of the school parking lot

while i wave to the grudges i’ve held and will hold

i just want to stop leaning on the word ‘just’ in my poems

— Lucas Restivo

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