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.

Chorizo and Clouds

This morning’s chorizo blackens, 

and these eyelids haven’t even slid open

enough to admonish the date--

In the shower, the milk has soured.

The soap hardens in the cold.

December isn’t too far off.

Fantastically, the steam lifts me 

to a world of clouds, 

wisps and tatters and heavenly shit, 

and I climax enthusiastically with images 

of you and a younger version of me 

trekking among these clouds, 

away from these splintery walls 

with holes pushed through, 

this hole in the unfinished floor that once 

nearly swallowed me and two dogs whole.  

At your seat, I’ve arranged a plate.  

Orange, now, from the egg.

The corn already has mixed itself in

crisply.  A long time ago, you would have

kissed me and smiled that half-curl of the mouth

you’re known for, then, 

put your hands up underneath the peel 

of my shirt to feel my heart 

before you ate.  I would have breathed 

confessional paragraphs into your neck.  

Yes, that was a long-ass  time ago, 

you’d likely say.  

Birds and Buicks

and there’s this road,

birds on it

blocking bikes and buicks

birds gouging pits

in asphalt, pits like sockets

like craters

like searching worms out

of rock;  and there’s

this homeboy

I used to go to

when my own sick birds

dig into those

things I’ve offered 

other vatos only to 

have them dismissed;

things like a ride

from county one 

night after a warrant got

served after a fight

after throwing my

ass outta my own house

onto concrete and steps

and that terrible scratch

etched into the back

where I slid into a nail

that burst right outta the floor;

there’s this road

where a cruise 

is the next best thing for

a vato with too much alone

time, too much attachment

to what was his in the past;

this road where a bird preys

upon a dead thing left between

F150s, sun, and traffic cones.

Back When I Was a Chavalon, Fair Ave.

Georgia

for J.

And in the afternoon, the hardness 

ascends from thighs.  And this is a time 

for telling what’s here amongst us four.

Within the growing and these ventricles that 

Surrender their girths to throats and tendencies--

I hold his cap to my mouth,

And my chin winces. 

Eyes wish this would last—this 

Don’t go.  Don’t go.  Repeating itself

Beneath the root of the tongue 

as if the syllables

Alone could manufacture time.

This is it, then:  the bone’s prayer.

Lungs, lungs.  

My face has his scent.  

Into a Fold 

Of dick skin, I pressed a murmur and 

imagined a big pearl.

Alive and warm in my hand

And then into the passage of throat. 

Gloating, it swam.

A December passed over me like jetsam and rockets.  

Armada of nimbus and space ships, 

they came and lifted my big pearl.

Pearl of all the ocean.

Pearl of the Gulf and the Nueces and 

the arroyo just east of the Courts where I come

to remember things.  

His ear wasn’t there but he could hear me.

From my toes that grabbed at planks of flooring--

vibrations, an echo, a shoe marooned at the 

far end of the room.  

Sitting on his belly, I rock.  

I, too, can give pearls,

Which I do:  a messy string of them encased in 

Chest hair and cachete.  

I pant.  I squat.  I feign I would 

Not miss the man or my pearl.

A melody.  I dug for one that I could hum or 

tap or suck on and that would occupy me 

For the night.  Toothless giggle.  

Stare at the tangle of pearls in my palm.  

Smug ruthless crinkle of it:  

inhabitable, drying.