Chilaquiles in a Vacant Booth on Blanco Street



where a taut-voiced waitress avoids me;

Guadalupanas huddled over other people’s mess;

noise, no traffic;

deliberation is the flat land of a cushion;

absorbed by tortillitas, threads abscond my lips;

(impalpability);

I reckon that the clang of bolts in my swollen throat has entangled itself in junctures of soft apprehension and that bothersome appetite that hushes the part of life that pines over shit at 3 am, sorts these amalgamated losses (old love, homeboys, dog, silver Azteca ring, sleep, valor, the past 2 years of my life, youth);

an elbow dug into this windowsill on which I rest my barrio sadness;

categories of unblemished disquietude and penance;

levers that will not budge and my view of the Tower from my canton on Fair Avenue;

chilaquiles trace so many ineptitudes that do not wipe away