“Before Surgery” & “Horse Movie”

Nico Amador is the winner of the 2026 Breakout Prize in Poetry, selected by Cynthia Cruz. Read the judge’s comments here.

Before Surgery

All night the cherry blossoms float
under the street lamps like jellyfish,
happy in their dark aquarium.
Tomorrow, they’ll make a wet carpet
under my feet. I can’t predict
what they do while my eyes are closed,
which dreams bloom from them,
how they fall and in what order.
A hospital glows near the overpass.
Everyone in bed there wears a gown.
When faced with the prospect of change,
I’m not brave. I want to keep my
claim to neutrality, a stance that’s difficult
to burden with expectations.
I want change without changing,
like the boats we fold from blank sheets
as children, which can also be hats,
or conches, flipped and held over the crotch
as a joke, clumsy flowers. The real flowers
get trampled, become unseemly
once they touch the sidewalk, distant
from their magic. It’s still possible
to uncommit to myself. A boyfriend says
I won’t put my mouth anywhere
you don’t want it. Don’t choose
the knife for me. You wouldn’t be
unbeautiful and life could continue
this way, a series of elisions
and negations. This private world,
it’s like crawling into a cardboard box
together. A homemade Luxembourg.
I keep a sleeping bag there.
I use the sharp tip of a pencil
to punch a series of holes above our heads.
I’m not silly enough to ask him
to call these stars. They’re the wordless gaps
between our fingers. I don’t need a name
for that. Let’s not call it anything.

---

Horse Movie

As a girl, I played a girl
who dreams beyond her seaside town
but only of horses. I wish that unfaltering
dream again. To make heaven a horse.
I wish for its lack of collarbones & upright sleep.
Its domestic pastures & panoramic runs,
an unfiltered sky rolling over us.
At the end of the dream, a city
waited like an event, full of people.
There, men & women seemed equally monstrous,
but the men more so, half-clad & bulging
inside their vaulted rooms like gods.
I couldn’t observe them comfortably
unless I pretended to be a horse.
Desire went unobserved. Bit and bridle
hung on the wall behind me.
In another life, I’ll be led back to these scenes
on all fours. I’ll be the one with grassy foam
clouding my lips, confessed to lesser
ambitions. In pursuit of praise, I’ll endure
any number of punishing tasks. When it’s offered,
finally, I’ll suck cool water from a bucket,
metal still lodged in my mouth.