Pit Bulls

The tall fence does not exist

when I vault over it, Dollar Store laundry basket in tow, 

and land, undetected, in Nike chanclas,

basketball shorts, and a mushroom head of dust 

(at 6:38 a.m. on a Saturday in May 2008; 

the sun, giant orb, already 

blaring on top of this raggedy backyard 

on the near Westside of town, jeopardizing our intent).

And huffing (Fuckin hurry, Joe), while accounting for 

seven of what once had been nine pups, 

my lover hoisted the rickety black bed-liner of a truck, which 

had served as a purported shelter for the dogs 

(safely in our possession, we already had the mama pit; 

after a week of feeding her on the sly (cruelly, she’d been

tied to this fence, the chokehold of a rope tether cutting deeply

into her neck flesh;  hence, the seventeen unanswered calls to city

animal control, the emails shot to the news stations regarding

animal cruelty and neglect, the famous councilwoman’s

special request after viewing the skin and bones of cruelty 

revealed by the disturbing pics I forwarded), the owner had 

moved her tie, so that the dog couldn’t, even with the most 

formidable efforts of her neck muscle, reach the food and water

bowls we’d stashed for her in the overgrown alley

(GOD BLESS YOU, a handwritten sign left behind 

on a discarded food wrapper placed beside a mound 

of her vomit had read the day prior)

warily, the dog feasted on kibble and regurgitated 

a mush of what her twenty-two pound frame couldn’t manage,

and frequently, she peered upward, contemplating

perhaps the fates of her seven remaining babies 

not to mention the intents of these two bald, 

tattooed men who were either saving or pilfering 

her offspring while fending off, with daily advocacy

and early morning fence-jumping, 

her own imminent death by starvation), firmly

over my 5‘7” shoulders, so that I could pluck each

flea-infested pup, bellies rotund, and eyes squeezed shut, 

placing each tiny body in the tightened 

confines of this white, plastic receptacle 

functioning, now, with a bath towel, as a makeshift crib, 

the whole time thinking to myself:  Maybe they’re gonna wake up

suddenly and think I’m jacking their

fifty-bucks-a-pop-in-the-WalMart-parking-lot

commodities (the rest of us know as pups) and 

shoot my ass dead.  How would KSAT 12 report

that shit?  Fuck.  Almost missed one.  There in the corner

by that old-ass, upturned sofa, and throughout the day,

I keep creeping back, peering apprehensively through slats in

the wood of our fence to see if I could locate 

the two pups we’d counted previously, 

which now were vanished.  Later, we decided

to call this brave one Monster due to his gargantuan size 

and this white-headed one Ling-Ling,

because of her Mestiza eyes, 

this one Lil Sid with his pronounced dome head and 

then Sweet P. and Rat, Big Cooter, and finally, Krunk Lil Evaine.  

The mama bully we named Kimora, and one night,

while my lover slept, she crept her slight frame up onto 

the hueco of our bed, nuzzled up child-like 

between his chest and mine and sighed (a hard-ass, hard-life sigh);

I knew then we’d keep her as our own.  

Clorox

In the long lineage of ribs, 

boneless ribs, containing cotton 

but no cartilage, 

to which connects no sternum, 

no clavicle, no ligament of heart

or lung, then, this pair of Chucks, folded over

and accompanied by tallboy calsitenes, 

chones, a wifebeater loaned or left behind, 

don’t matter when observing one’s tio shine 

and his homeboy shine

and that fine-ass vato in the blue Cutty at the car wash shine

and your jefa’s old school dude shine 

and your homegirl’s brother Guicho shine 

so firme, so fine--

one’s homeboy crease down so fine. Then, 

this pair of tongues that whisper, 

“This way.  Asinita, bro.”  

Hanging Bed Sheets

That man you’re fighting with, 

He called tonight

While you’re tugging shoestrings 

off the skinny clotheslines of a trailer park childhood 

and peculiarity bloats the ombligo of sky,

beneath the cackle of splintery electric poles and

tweaked-out Clowns swapping bumps, beneath stars

that droop like bolts of sweat, 

you’re pinching salt near eyelids and

sponging boot prints off your cheek, and 

haphazardly, the man inside me is wiping 

scuff marks from floorboards 

where the dancing occurred.  

In thunderstorms and nightmares, 

My abuelo used to strip our beds and 

hang the bed sheets, stained and

fending off impotency, over all the mirrors of the house.

Other nights, he’d clamber up the roof and piss a

golden pain as we’d all switch off turns attempting 

to coax him back to bed.  And that’s how I learned

to hang bed sheets in front of mirrors.  

That man you’re fighting with,

He called tonight.

Sleepy and the Rock, 1993

a memory I lost but now have found

“See this rock.”  Perched between stout fingers, 

a homeboy shows off the rock, and I check the shit out 

like it’s fucking magic what he holds in the

sandpaper that is a hand.

“This rock ain’t shit,” he goes.  

“Til I put my arm behind it, guey.  

And then, shit, watcha.  

Watch what this little bitch can do.”

Intrigue flutters.  Wild, gilded eyes.  

I’m doubled over.  A day before Valentine's.

Torpedoing and a soft whistle 

across overgrown yard and a gate that won’t shut, 

shattering a toothless window to an old house 

that’s empty now except for the imprints of tecatos 

who shoot endless brown there and 

fuck and nod off and stave off life.

Now, I’m watching that rock.  

Seeing it spin.  Watchando.  

Huffing, still.  

Sleepy grabbing on me and dissolving.

Seeing it bring shit down, he goes,

“Life fucks up fast, manito.”  

I ain’t huffing no more.  

The sting that overwhelmed my lungs dissipates.  

I’m following a homeboy who has sped ahead 

of me on a rigged-up ten-speed, a homeboy who

swallows from a tallboy Schaefer as he pedals

and will put a mouth on me in the dreams that keep

me company when everyone else has failed.

The sun is hot like fuck.

The eyes of la vecina fisgona swarm around me, and 

the trains howl like dogs.

My breathing gaffs.  Desire stifles amongst so many 

locusts and then rises up again like perhaps maybe

when Sleep invites me to kick back at his pad, 

this shit might really happen, 

all the cards fall into place finally.

But they don’t.  

And instead, I’m here chasing, smashing

open another beer I don’t want,

always chasing the shit that I can never get.

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.

Hog

Tied, this man I know

had his belly pressed to asphalt

and had his wrists, thin and bony, 

tethered atop his spine

(ankles there, too)--

traps and black tar and thighs

override a 9:30 sky:  

while hosed over him: orange,

orange, the iridescent orange,

marvelous orange, which those

of us birthed in barrios and on calles know 

(so pretty, if he was not so forcibly bound

and spitting up sludge over lips 

and chin).

“Why??  Why??”

Another part of his heart arrives.

I never knew the young vato’s name,

yet, his namesake was known.  They called

him Speedy, and he lived someplace down

the road, and surely, this one called

Speedy must have known

what his old man was up to.

Must have been able to figure

it out.  “What the fu...!?!?”

His young vato’s voice, a harpoon.

And then, the youngster gets balls

and thinks he’ll rush to where

the chotas have his old man pinned;

“Get back!  Get back!”

A scuffle.  Turmoil.  

I remember the way my own cora

put a fist on me that was soon a grip

above the crux of elbow and hindsight 

on which I’d soon, like that youngster, 

rest the brunt of all my questions and all

my kites.

On the ground, skin glimmers.

Face busted up and sausage-like,

not palpable, not meaningful.

“This ain’t our shit,” my own old

man goes.  We climb our stairs.  

Inside, we can hear the shouts.  

When the shots come, I don’t even watch

from the flimsy bed sheet

draped grandly to the tall window 

of our Lorena Street canton.  

In the morning, I watch an anciana

hose the place on the concrete

where Speedy’s vato gave up his blood.

And This, After I'd Hit Him up for Some Carino (2009)

Balloons and Boulders

What is crime, I ask.

What is punishable if unavoidable, you go.

Say the man is twenty-nine

or twenty-five, but looks moth-eaten,

cheeks as sawtoothed as cliffs.

Say he is six foot two.

Say he is car-less and comfortless

(and that explains his females, 

the appetites).

Say his arms have gone black,

intricate twists and helixes where 

needles have pricked and poked him.

Say his eyes are starved.

Say his eyes are illiterate,  his lungs rash.

From a window, I watch.

From a window, I count.

Seven cars in one afternoon.

A stream of them:  coming!  coming!

There are loud women who knock handsomely,

and men, groomed, silent as spiders, 

weaving caliche into stunning lace, 

their urges clutched to navels as another 

would wield cash.  This is the envelope of unloading: 

Allotments and the burden of a balloon 

as hulking as boulders.

Asphalt

I’m seven.   

Barefoot, my mother runs after Raul’s Ford.

Don’t leave me, babe!  

Don’t leave me!

At 33, she calls.  

Frantic.  Dying sounds

conveyed via cellphone.

She ran over my cat.

In the street, the cat is convulsing.

If I’m crying, perhaps he won’t

yell at me, she thinks.

I’m sure of it.

It’s worked with other men.

At 33, I leave my dinner

and lock myself in a room.

I’m twenty-one.  

Puke stains the tops of my feet.

I didn’t quite make it to the sink.

Don’t die on me, mijo.

Why are you gonna die on me!?

Haphazardly, I wipe the yellow

mush, enough of it, not to track

it to the bath.

At 3 a.m., I’ve parked crookedly.  

In the street, I am barefoot.

Enough tequila in me to set

her voice ablaze.

I’m five.

My father fights with my mother and 

leaves with my uncle.

Move, move! she insists.

I’m pushed aside.   Having

just waved goodbye to them, my hand

goes through the rip in the grey screen.

Why don’t you just fuck him, too!

She yells, and the neighbors duck their

heads out trailer doors and 

manufactured screenless windows.

His truck speeds off, and she’s left

huffing the dust.

Such heaps of asphalt to rub away.

Sweeping after Having Remembered Mi Abuela 

i.

At the sink, the talavera

has clanked, broken water, and

chipped so that I must hide it, while 

noiselessly, you sit,

paint splat across an elbow, the

10 o’clock news rattling on and on

about armed robbery and wrecks-- 

the pit bull curled like a

rattlesnake at your boot.  

ii.

There was a time when

we were in Mexico, and I’d packed

our plates and the bowls I 

promised to purchase each trip we

made;  when we moved to

this house I never wanted,

these plates stayed put away,

same newsprint wrapping, 

same cardboard box, 

same thing that happened, 

I sometimes fear, 

to the knuckles we once called my heart.

iii.

In the bed, you sleep.  The dogs

snore and sigh.  A pillow

covering your face from the 

whisk of the broom I run over the

hickory floors you laid last winter.  

Te vas a casar con una viuda.  

You will marry a widow, I recall my Indian

abuela stutter as she pushed

a bundle of yellow straw 

over my unprotected feet 

when she would come to the States

to visit us and get money

for those of us who stayed behind.

Ironically, it is you who married

the widower.