chulos dressed for anabasis. Handball court liturgies. Little Ivan of the Aztec jungle prays before drowning in concrete.
Baked curbsides incite the butcher to adorn his quinceañera gown, kiss a wireman before sweaty tenements perfumed
in pitorro. Expired hydrants mimic Cepheus, wait to be
rezoned. Boxed in. Boxed up. Boxed out.
Hopscotch dereliction among the scree. Morir de angustia. Community garden pig roast. Courtroom shocker. He's got wrecking-ball lungs, hickory smoked
ribs belting bachata for nine weeks and counting. A pockmarked marquee citing Ephesians. Mystery sludge crawls, congeals into a pond. It's no place to raze, to raise
a raza, she raps.
Desespera siempre, negrito, siempre desaparecidos.
Gas mask revelation, paper lamps bequeathed to repo lots.
Benevolent diss associations. Insolent departures from blue-faced angels named Angel who dawdle
in the basement with botanica candles.
Silence indicted, offered a plea deal. But the sitter is a despot vowing
Cocotazos pra todos!
What I saw was what I meant was what was was.
Southbound, a roving vigil for the sundered. Northbound,
an impaired fleet of unemployed demagogues recolonizing the pool
hall. The Rubble Kings resurrected as testimonios stricken from public record.
"The poem takes its name from and is an ekphrastic of an exhibition of Martin Wong’s paintings. I found an affinity with this work both because it serves as a visual archive of the Lower East Side of New York, a place that helped me come of age as an artist, and because there is a focused interest on how people of color create community in foundering urban spaces."
"Every era has its own Sylvia Plath, its own version of a poet whose archetypes are by now so familiar, so rote, as to be at first glance banal: teenage goth girl queen, dutiful daughter, straight-A student, disgruntled housewife, feminist trailblazer, genius in her own right. And so too, it appears, does every country."
Poetry Daily stands with the Black community. We oppose racism, oppression, and police brutality. We will continue to amplify diverse voices in the poetry world. Black Lives Matter.
"I’m not that old, but I’ve lived long enough to know that the lion’s share of my life is behind me. I know there are relationships I can’t hold on to, and places I can’t return to. I’m just beginning to see 'real time,' the arc of almost half a century, and how the generational waves, both violent and beautiful, define our species."
