Stipple Ceiling

How each crest
becomes a snow kissed

mountain when the hallway light—
blood orange like

—kicks on.
And each mountain

creates a shadowed
valley—textured, nuanced,

where lakes might form
if given enough time,

and rivers could divide
settlements where a boy

might grow up,
be told stories

about those who once tried
to pass through.

No one has to know
what lies beyond

those mountains, how there’s a smooth
ceiling just one room over

and when the light hits that slick surface—
the LED or the sun

without a blanket of smoke
—there’s a calm.

BRENT AMENEYRO

Brent Ameneyro is the author of the collection A Face out of Clay (Center for Literary Publishing, 2024) and the chapbook Puebla (Ghost City Press, 2023). His poetry has been published in the Alaska Quarterly Review, The Iowa Review, Ninth Letter, The Journal, Hayden’s Ferry Review, Azahares, Hispanic Culture Review, and elsewhere. He is the 2022–2023 Letras Latinas Poetry Coalition Fellow at the University of Notre Dame. He currently serves as the Poetry Editor at The Los Angeles Review.