Briana Muñoz
Headline: “Nearly a Dozen Homeless Encampments Found in the Bosque”
Let the fallen branches
chopped down by the beavers
serve as shelter
and the river flowing
aside your abode,
let it serve as temporary comfort
your tired body
let it rest
under the cottonwood relatives
and the hundreds of crows
that caw
let their song be your solace
your existence doesn’t threaten
mother earth here
as it does “concerned” citizens
who clutch their handbags
as they walk over
your makeshift housing
let the Bosque
be what society’s failings
couldn’t be for you.
about the author
Briana Muñoz is a poet from Southern California. She is the author of two books of poetry including Loose Lips (Prickly Pear Publishing) and Everything is Returned to the Soil (FlowerSong Press). Her work has been published in the anthology How to Reimagine America, Cultural Daily, the Beat Not Beat Anthology, the Oakland Arts Review, Dryland Literary Journal, the Angel City Review, the Somos Xicanas anthology, and several other publications.
Briana is the founder of Poetry as Harm Reduction and currently serving as the board of directors secretary for the Los Angeles Poet Society. She has performed poetry in places like the International Poetry Festival of Havana, Cuba, the 2015 Festival de Poesia in Tijuana, Baja California, MX, as well as at the XXI Congreso Internacional de Literatura y Estudios Hispanicos in Quito, Ecuador.