Oscar Mireles Poems

In the seventh grade in 1968,
playing football on the school playground
I heard that
Martin Luther King Jr.
...

It started in 1949, when my oldest brother
came home from school
in Racine, Wisconsin
after flunking kindergarten
...

a Korean woman
had been sitting
in my cultural awareness class,
for an hour,
...

Father’s Day Poem

My children are old enough
to know it is Father Day
...

My father proudly showed me
his new birth certificate
that had our last name Mireles
spelled with a “z”
...

My youngest son asked me this as we were
laying around arguing whether I was going to read more than one book or not…

will grandma Mickey’s hair still be white, when we are in heaven?
...

My right big toe
has been black and blue
since the time
old Benny Navarro
...

I arrived late
to the mind’s eye
poetry group meeting
and I interrupted a critique of a prose poem
...

I'm gonna take the South out of South Africa
the home of the slaves
and the land of no freedom
...

When I was asked what my favorite body part is?

It was not the kind of question
I get asked every day
...