I’m dying in October, but refuse to,
one more way to defy Papi who said
that I was dead to him for being gay.
The doctors only diagnose my body.

25 years of silence between Papi and me,
and while enduring my two comas and
ruthless tubes, I don’t know that he’ll
soon die in December, that he has asked
 
his pure ashes to be thrown among his
horses’ fields in a Puerto Rico that
he’s kept to himself.  All my life, there
have been horses:  the toys, my Utah
 
gaucherie as a man, teaching Equus
to urban poets, and Neruda’s Berlin
fierce horses in my favorite poem ever
tamed.  My stubbornness gets me out
 
of the hospital, but I promised the man
who brought me to this world that I’d
go to his services in a red dress and dance
to shock the family. Sadly, I don’t do
 
drag, but the family blood’s scarlet is
mine.  I can’t and won’t go to the funeral,
but here, Papi, is a winged horse for you
to love, this poem bred to bear our burdens.