Full Immersion Baptism (in Brake Dust)

Los Angeles, 1996

In the pocket between a woman and her gallo, I was born.

Under a bridge.

Under a hard moon (alone, a fat white coin

not shining enough in a sky outshone by a city

and its crazies, its crooks, its

Concrete and intestines of rie bar), and above

these sleek and bulky buildings, 

above these urban arteries bulging 

of asphalt and exhaust,

the air glimmers inorganically and 

has grown black as crow feathers.

My baptism, then.  

Atop a rooftop, around a grip of dendrites 

that snap and click (magically, synaptically) 

inside a skull vividly recollecting his scalp 

pressed watchfully, obligingly, to mine 

on colchones that smelled of Eternity and Chicanismo

(one floor below the roof--the apartment

with the altar to la Virgen honoring Patricio 

and the Daytons stacked high like coins (in the bedroom)), 

the city has risen up.  

Atop a rooftop one night in August, 

where Cyndi Lauper crooning 

for those of East Hollywood who’d open their ears

is too much to bear: 

“You with the sad eyes/ don’t be discouraged...”

My baptism, then.  

At the moment two cars collide.

At the moment he surrenders.  

At the moment the cuffs strike wrist bone and ulna:

A high-speed chase where

I lost someone (lost for good, for

crimes, for carga, for my

epiphany (what I’ll call that 

crestfallen hour I sat speechless on the

empty sofa while tv cameras

and newscasters and ghetto birds

announced a man’s flaws to the viewing world) 

to come to me like a giant bird plunging earthward off 

the oddly perpendicular perch 

from where he’s despised me; 

(never got to deliver mi despedida,

or say my last goodbye, sit atop a rooftop with 

a vato and swoon to Cyndi Lauper again).

In the pocket between a man and his Regal, I was born.

Under a tower.  

Under a big white sun and the Hollywood sign.

Under heavy lights and an observatory.

Under eleven hundred stars (uneven, unruly even for 

the most disheveled of constellations

attempting futilely to pull themselves together 

amid the weight of an entire freeway 

and its wet iridescence (a recollection of his scalp

and his shine and that skin up around the canthus 

of his eyes in a rainstorm as he smiles, and we push

to catch the last bus out of Hawthorne.     

Despite the time, the silver velour beneath us

is his backseat, which tenderly composes itself,

assembling in the form of arms and lungs and 

other things that bring people together, 

hold them there, keep us from coming 

unyoked, unaligned)).

In the pocket between a man and his Regal,

a woman and her gallo, I was born.

Under a bridge.

Under a hard moon.

Under a big white sun and the Hollywood sign.