Paula Mendoza

• GO-TO 

•  
• When it’s been told, all told, every lifetime

• I revisit, stroke of nostalgia atomizing
• clementines, or chlorine, some scent
• I recognize, or don’t, but fold into
• new convolutions, the same story reordering
• my days and verbs ahead, and I
• can’t for the line of me extract any more
• than: I am
• tired. I am tired
• of myself when I think
• of you and nowhere we are
• headed towards, the last word
• always
• the first, again. Again.

PAULA MENDOZA has had her work appear in Bat City Review, Washington Square, Parcel, and elsewhere. She earned her MFA at the University of Michigan and is a PhD candidate at the University of Utah. She lives and writes between states.