Monte Carlo

for a Torcido

Outside a Southside cantina, and I, though

furious, am huffing, as I’ve run six bold blocks,

gold spackled in a patina across

jaw and tooth and septum, am five, again,

and curious, again, and it’s the torcido alone

at the far end of the bar with the

marvelous bigote and the Jesucristo tattoos 

and the black Monte Carlo of my boyhood, 

breathing heavily from a chrome pipe, 

all the while glints of 2x4s and giants

and the slickness of my scalp seen in those 

side panel doors, and I’ve peeked in that door

before (cousin Ernesto putting his dick shaft 

into the rim of a Gatorade bottle, father 

on top of a woman who wasn’t my mother, 

a silver chain belonging to a lover’s trick 

left at my sink) to see things I shouldn’t look at after

having bolted out my Fair Avenue canton, 

hurdling six city blocks, thinking only of that torcido, 

the veins of his forearms and his thorns, 

and huffing old tinta like a maniaco out of the bote.