We carry this village on our arms--

Planchadito, November 2007

Cicada at the Cusp of Eyelid and Socket


Even the machine in the window cannot hum louder.
Nor the autos sputtering and rocketing determinedly
across tin timidity and sky. Throbbing metropolis of tripas and hidagos;
This sprawling device I’ve devised down to the twist of a wire--
Snip and scorch. I’ve mattered prior to this. To this fluid
Where we convince cicadas to prowl relentless ballads for majesty that
Won’t exist, not for insects; I conjure mattresses on which to expound
this thing that’s happened between me and you. I say I may be
back—watch my diligence expand, watch my red mouth bloom so
astoundingly.

Citlalin


You were the one I called two-star,
Obsidian-skinned and tiny enough to swallow!
A thousand moons ago you embarked to us.
Trajectories of comets and cataclysms, amid
Asteroids as large as worries: the sound of your
Fantastic flight—the voyage of a xolo’s howl.

Ay, how I could cup you in my ear, chiquito, and
hear all that you’ve seen and have come
To us to impart, correct, heal, illuminate—that drum
That pounds elemental messages like constellations into
The velvety mouth of dawn. I see you still, Citlalin,
A journeyed star, strong enough to
explain the bleakest patches of my own failed eyes.

Arrivals. Arrivals. Infant as wise as the light of an ancient
Life form. Today, I set light to the earth, and cried and tried, yet,
no trumpets to announce you’d left us arrived,
except this hardened conch swollen up like a heart that yowled
in this cavity I’ve known as chest.

so this homeboy thinks heavy on his babe unaware of the cora swelling in the other room

Papaya Poem Half-Composed at the Poteet Swap Meet One Afternoon While a Silver Virgencita Gleams Lovingly along My Babe’s Formidable Chest
for JS


With this papaya, I
Cultivate hours that are soon an amalgamation
Of years; this span of prickly stillness, that nimble blur,
Which is already bone and tongue; and
My heart has stirred and parted,
That lucid, timid part that no one sees, no one privy,
But you—

You have the eyes for such a sight;
Precise, that vast intensity you carry
Like breath in the pocket of the lung of the eye,
Simón—esos ojitos; and for this, I promise laughter
in the portraiture of our truck,
Uninhibited laughter, colossal as air;
Promise, herein, to hold your thick
Familiarity in the cavernous expanse that is
My belly, the quinto chambers of the nopal
I’ve assembled into a corazón;

Tonight, the rabbit of the moon on my thighs, where
Your lips dance as Catrinas and Cortezes
Pirouette; a crescendo of
A painter’s suspiro;
All these seeds of papayas, all these seeds of promesas
Cascade over throat muscle and the hard
Arroyo of the vein that runs the terrain
Of all I have to give and have had taken in life and
Am offering to you, guey;
Remember when you said,

Damn, chulo, with those lips and those eyes,
I could spend some serious time…

I-37
for my Hyperion


i. Eyelids
Ajar. Tar. Tar seethes
Into asphalt wounds. Wonderland never
Appeared so thawed. Rueful equilibrium!
Appease me, now, hours. For soon, I’ll soak these
Tattered toes in gentle buckets of
Milk so white, the fur of doves will emerge
Goat-like and inveterately doomed.


ii. Faith
And the clouds have all curdled. Testaments:
Traffic gnarls. Exposes jagged rows of
Metal. Casualties so contorted and
Impatient—entire jowls serrate, separate.


iii. Downtown San Anto
To the beat of aluminum alloy beasts,
Jaundiced eye sockets twitter. Attachments.
Allowances. Barbados and pajaritos!
Anxieties toss cakes of silence beneath tire treads;
My ardor for you is explicit.
Ay, monarca wings and 5 am unrequited clutching!


iv. Accordions
Resolve enigmas among these odd clots of clouds.
I-37, I favor pechos festooned with blooms
of xoloizcuintlis, Spook Light cicatrizes.
In las palmas, I ascend to summer and reconcile
the stars. Incurably, I carry away the sun.

Flores Street Car Wash & the Uncanny Mementos Proffered by a South San Anto Industrial-Size Dumpster



An assertion:
Washroom allegories!

My allegiances pledged to vatos and one verga.
A vow to vacuum and wax these cuerpos that are
All alloy and homeboy chrome.
Termites gouge eyes in the box spring
I dragged from the cold room in Coahuila when
Chirps and chortles cuff that esophageal splatter
I hacked up over that turgid cena of puerco and pan.
This is the belligerence of la verdad stuffed in the
Disposal bin innards of lions and xorizo hybrids and
Parables of busted-up lawn furniture belonging to Laura Leon.
Signal, sigh, bump a rolla or a cuento, throw a lil cruise—
Of grackles, of the giant cloud-bound bird de San Benito
Eyeing all of us as bait. Triple sheen!
Dos Mujeres! Un Camino! Amen!

Scrap3 1

Pensive Armadillo at the Embankment of a Cacophonous Asphalt Road



In this heat I unfurl.
Difficult as armadillo traversing all of
Hidalgo County, and my skull so small,
You could crush me in one flex
Of wrist muscle and rope.

This body, my body that beneath
You is no one. No, no tendon. No ligament,
But piedra, perhaps, adobe baked
Centuries, mouthful of el Rio Bravo, maybe;
Malleable, I’m certain. Beneath you,
Anything plausible—

An armadillo as lithe as the little flower
of the moon; You on my back,
and here, I am marvelous as
Mud. In this heat, I unfurl.

s3lf-flika con colchon y sol3dad

2007

A Red Giant Rises High above Aztlan
for a Painter in Missouri

to offer you the Oaxacan songbird of my heart,
for it croons, guey, and soon, I, too, will procure that tune,
splice open this cage of avid ribs and swoon,
while love looms monstrously, like an odd red star—
so lustrous, guey, so lustrous.
And for us, that magnificent bird will ascend, then, this
bony ladder, perched atop
my pecho, he will soothe you, babe—Verás. Verás.
Your hands, mi cielo!
That marvelous jaguar of your eye! Malleability!
What tributaries and tribulations, guey!
The Gulf of mis ojitos, the bravest rio de los tuyos—
They’ve enjoined, so I’ve crafted this tribute of maize
and maldiciones; I bludgeon aloneness for you,
Hunt butterflies, gather bullets;
Cushion of my panza and my penance—
Will you allow me? I could cradle you, cariño.
Could cradle you, serio.

am3rican classixxx--4

d3dicat3d 2 all th3 tamal3 slang3rz of th3 world, from granny's hot tamal3z vans posting up on 40 str33t corn3rz in corpitos 2 th3 youngst3rz across all of aztlan, coll3cting th3ir barrio cr3dz, bundl3s of st3aming ojas tuck3d in folds of shiny aluminum und3r th3ir soon-to-b3 v3t3rana/o arms; i salut3 you. n3ta.

Untitled Temptation Poem for a Homeboy Epiphany Regarding Rain on a Soggy-Ass Sunday Nite


Susto: out of the flat, flat plains, a trickle of it:
sssssssssssssssssshhhhhhk—
A burst. Belligerence, boasts. A voz.
Blusters, bombards. Voz.
Electronic, prickly voz. Primordial voz.
Lofty as the tallest bellies of table-clouds
and spring bulls,
that buoyancy, which brings me to this:
Tlaloc—
Mogul of mud and mestizos,
Plateaus and pilgrimages,
Putos and piety: a jaino in January, a jaino
En Marzo. Traiciones, monarcas;
Relampagos y cabarones—
Ssshhk. Sssshhk.
This susto is what a vato like me is all about.

n3ta: 1 played handball at 3scobar Parqu3 this morning aft3r i thr3w down a rowdy m3nudo & put down a rosar1o for an old3r hom3boy whos3 b33n n33din som3 chorizo & pray3rs r3al bad.

Pearls Are Like Scapulars


Lavish a throat. Leer. Punctuate each breath.
A bead. A bed. Twitters, twilight—
On good days, watch me
Bombard wishes with wily babas—
Asi. Asi.
See, I inflict said incandescent cut atop the lip;
Split at the vortex of knuckle;
And knowing
That all things pop apart, all things
Splintery bone; carcass of a telephone
Call where
I, like blackberry paste and birdish haste,
can hear a veterano’s soul crack
thwack—

<13;12;04>

thwack—
Beneath the fluorescence, jangle, jangle
of a thousand shanks:
oh, Mysteries, oh, Faith—and Years of keys
And keys and keys
and keys that don’t wield but the bonds of
Involuntarily quoting arthropods and guerreros—
Ey, you ever watch 2 vatos hold it down?
Naw. Not in years, he said.

Weight of carne, weight of flanks.
You remind me of this one vato I used to know.

Torso of a Widowed Cholo Grappling Nostalgia and Virtue



Dominoes and rose petals galore!
The persistence of a blade.
A table astray, dishes mesmerize
An eyelid,
A mechanical spirit, audible, audible,
Another gaze—

Reminiscing peppermint saliva;

Astute, and all these capsules,
All these culprits;
Oh, Ms. Tilman,
Oh, static and sanctum!
All these yelps.
The Clout of gauze and mazes,
Hardly, hardly what I’m accustomed to:
A monster, a virtue, a smoking mirror.
I’ve blessed the Dead amid this fuselage.

Smirk, Sly Arroyo (And Eels, Too, Kneel)

I carry the village in tattoos across my arms.

--Luis J. Rodriguez

On this sleeve,

On this, the eve of 11—

On the battalion of scalps and scapegoats, I

Devour a namesake, hoard scraps, these

Iron-clad heirlooms;

Eulogy, eulogy,

Chucks, estirantes, mi tapa that once

once

Was ours—

A whisper zigzagged the moon, disguises the skies,

And I’m marooned, doomed, I

Loom, a cirrus pantheon,

I bloom;

Smirk, sly arroyo, so coarse so coaxed:

That Tuesday Circus

Encircles my girth, all my worth

Propounds what one envelope divulges that day

Si fue tu, guey. All of it there—

Jetsam, scrape, los payasitos

lithe as eels.