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.