Conversation

 

Hooded underneath a freeway overpass late-night, Arthur brags in
East Los limelight, “I ain’t never been to no college, but I got a MFA
in spray,” feverishly shaking the Krylon can relishing the rhythmic

ticking tickling his ear, as if readying to empty the psychedelic stream
of his 17 year-old psyche onto the parched wall. But if this were a
college course, it would be called something like Advanced Appreciation

of Our Song: Words White America Doesn’t Want to Hear or Read.
The prerequisite—to hurl oneself into a maelstrom of 80’s gangsta’
rap, head bouncing up and down affirming gritty lyrics chronicling

real-life ghetto hardships. Nurse a 40 oz. while viewing a 90’s movies
marathon where the signature line of each film is, “Either they don’t
know, don’t sho’, or just don’t care about what’s goin’ on in the hood.”

But to Arthur college is as far off as Iceland, or the distance from his
street moniker to Wall Street. A voiceless life of invisibility, just another
lamenting Latino held down by The Man with sunny skin and a fat grin

destined to a life of leaf-blowing, or laboring in fields adjacent to So Cal
freeways picking strawberries for upper class’s cornucopia. But maybe
the class is basic Philosophy, or Humanities, as Arthur says, I think ants

are a test from God to see what kind of people we are. Check it. If we
expect them to take from us and smash them assuming they’re gonna’
steal our comida, we’re going to Hell. But if we accept them believing

they have as much right to the table as we do (especially por que they
clean up the mess people leave), Heaven. Except for red ants. Them
Mother Fuckers are the devils teeth, before spraying an American flag

on the wall, a white stick man in the middle, eyes closed like death,
palms compressing ears sealing in status quo, ensuring no bug will
ever crawl in.

(Originally published at Whsiper and SCREAM)

Riding My Schwinn to Wienerschnitzel During My Conference Period

 

I should be grading papers right now,
even though I already know the outcome:
a steady stream of scarlet scores, fragile,
low, like the concern from those
whose apathetic hands birthed them.

They don’t care; why should I?

I was craving chili-cheese fries,
a manufactured mountain of grease, gluttony,
escape.

Ask any poet their definition of escape:

      stepping outside oneself, AWOL,
      always coming back to the source
      of inspiration.

Ask any teacher their definition:

      running outside the campus,
      away from PTA, SATs, ADHD,
      never second-guessing or looking back.

Part of me wants to sit in the
cracked leather chair
the bankrupt district has furnished me,
scribble obscenities in the form of
letter grades,
an assembly line of procrastination
and consternation.

The other part wants to
sip soda on the fast food bench,
chili-fried legs dangling from my lips
like processed past participles,
contemplating the consequences
if my principals ever see this in print.

(freshly published at Underground Voices Magazine)

A Walk Through the Memory Palace

            A couple of months ago, the good folks at readwritepoem asked me if I’d like to be a stop on the read write poem virtual book tour.  I was initially hesitant to accept.  I knew I had a lot going on and adding another thing on top of teaching high school, working on my MFA, submitting my own work out for publication, and family life, would be a stretch.  But after giving it MUCH consideration, I’ve accepted and you are here: expecting to read my review of Pamela Johnson Parker’s chapbook, A Walk Through the Memory Palace.  As much as my hectic schedule caused me to debate whether or not to accept the invite, so too was the possibility I might offend others (author included) by not giving the chapbook a “favorable” review.  But this is a “tour stop,” not a “review stop,” and I’m treating it as such, since I’m pretty sure the other stops on the tour will be more inclined to review the book.

            But, if I were to give the chap a simple one sentence informal review, I’d say I don’t care for the contents of the book.  As a thirty-something Latino living my whole life in Southern California, I can’t relate to many of the book’s references, specifically to nature.  Admittedly, I’m not one for poetry with images, themes, figurative language, etc. alluding to conventional definitions of nature (if that makes sense) to begin with.  My nature is the dirty Pacific Ocean, tall buildings, and inner-city students.  And while it can be argued that a “good” poem transcends personal experience and cuts to the core of the human spirit, A Walk Through the Memory Palace in that regard does not do that, for me.  As I read the poem “Tattoos” I did not want to read  Cardamom, ginger,/pomegranate bark.   I wanted something more hard-hitting.  And it should come as no surprise upon reading “Unreal Gardens Without Toads in Them Or, Last Year’s Journal, This Year’s Yard” I wasn’t vibing with the hydrangea, sunlit maples, sea-green tree frog’s back all written within the first three stanzas of the poem.  Of course, how many publishers set out to publish a book catering to minority males.  This chapbook simply isn’t written for me.  And maybe a poet might suggest they set out to write a book for those who love the art of poetry.  Maybe.  But we all know who we have in mind when we write (or at least who will most appreciate our work), and to say otherwise is a lie.  HOWEVER, what I can relate to in the book is the sheer beauty of the language.  The sounds each syllable creates stirs the Long Beach living, frequent burrito eating, poverty children teaching poet in me.  Pamela Johnson Parker’s deftly painted words linger on the tongue and ease out of the mouth when, and only when, they are ready.  Because others will undoubtedly give you examples later on, I’ll leave it at that.   But this is not a review.  It is a tour stop.  And on this tour stop I’ve chosen to celebrate the delicate compassion of A Walk Through the Memory Palace by sharing a poem written specifically for the stop.  If you’ve ever read any of my work, you’ll see this poet could only benefit from being exposed to a book like this.  Sometimes I don’t pay as much time as I should to the senses.  But I do try to absorb all I read in the efforts to maximize what I am capable of writing at the time.  The following is an ekphrastic/A Walk Through the Memory Palace inspired poem.  Is it my best?  Not nearly.  Is it finished?  No.  But it is the product of inspiration I got out of the chapbook itself, when read and held in my hands.  It is my attempt to incorporate the elegance of Pamela Johnson Parker’s writing with my own, specifically unfinished because like Pamela, I’m waiting to be guided by that something.
 

Untitled/Unfinished

Her body is honeycomb:
wax tapestry of limbs and skin,
hexagonal patterns of piety
contemplating the cusp of dusk.   

Her tears, flares:
prelude to darker days,   
remnants of determined embers
that once flew straight over the groves
like homesick arrows. 

I am unsure… “What’s the matter?”     
“It’s none of your beeswax.”
And she is certain.

She may be broken, critically crestfallen,
as if her severed vertebrate are detoured train tracks
that once connected winter and spring,
pollination and anything bright resembling life.

Bees only sting when provoked. Give their lives
when they feel threatened…

Monkeybicycle

I LOVE Monkeybicycle!!!  It’s one of my favorite reads.  Out today, Monkeybicycle 7.  I’m fortunate enough to be included with some great writers.  Below is my poem that appears.

Fellow Man

 

The weathered cardboard sign was nothing novel.
Neither was the location at the Carson exit
off the 605.  But his message was.

Help laid-off father.
Fresh, ice cold bottled water.
Only a dollar.

I immediately admired him
for the candor of his words.
And for his boldness embedding
assonance in a haiku.

The rain wasn’t predicted that Father’s Day.

I’m certain the man and his dad
went fishing in the Potomac many years ago,
the man a young boy filled with dejection
as the uncooperative worm
not wanting to die,
squirmed off the hook countless times.

I’m certain his father
gently grasped and lifted his son’s head,
looking the boy in his eyes
the color of anticlimactic sunrise 
telling him not to give up,
the worm would soon tire,
and have no choice but to sacrifice himself
so his son wouldn’t die
such a slow, writhing death.

Because the man paced the embankment
waving frigid bottles next to
unsympathetic thunderclouds
baiting motorists stopped at the red light,

while drivers nervously fumbled
with their presets,
as if they’ve never been thirsty,
in all their lives.

Like Flowers and Martyrs

 

I.

In West Virginia he is strapping on a vest.
The back is shiny.
The front is a color he’d call gay
(because everything not preferable at 16 is
automatically christened homosexual).
But it matches his date’s dress,
and because her va-va-voom
top of the pyramid pom-pom
ra-ra-ra-sis-boom-ba body
causes him to cheer, profess his love
every time she gets undressed,
he does what he’s told,
a self-imposed servant to burgeoning breasts.

II.

In the West Bank they are strapping a vest to him.
The back digs into his soul.
The front is what boys his age put up
when they have been hurt,
or are about to die.
They kiss his cheek goodbye, leave him alone:
to confirm each explosive in place
that rest between the ridges in his ribcage.
To mutter last words because his upper lip
stutters at the sudden stare
of a sacred pilgrimage.
To pull the chord,
a self-imposed enemy.
He does what he’s told Jihad rebel with a cause,
and a confiscated identity.

III.

Someday you’ll rip open the pouch;
pour the seeds into your palm
and spread them lovingly into the Earth
as if sprinkling the best parts of you
into the entrails of your unborn children.
Someday you’ll be a corsage
delicately wrapped around the limp wrist
of a debutante dolled in daffodil
for a super sweet sixteen,
or the boutonniere fastened in a sharp lapel
at a homecoming dance in a gym swimming
in crepe paper.
Or someday you’ll be lamenting life,
just another flower
flung at dirtside memorial
where a father’s head just blew off.

(Originally published here)

Frequent Flyer

 

They put bite-size chocolates on the long tables
to appease us at our monthly meetings.
For some it seems to suffice, but not me,
showing us graphs on degrees of retention.

We are losing our children.
We need to plan lessons with more rigor and relevance.
Our students are playing catch-up to India.

The day before in my Creative Writing class,
Kenneth Platt asked anyone who’d listen—

“Did you know that we lose 40 to 100 strands of hair a day?
That the Neanderthal’s brain was bigger than ours?
That India has more sex than any country in the world?”
To which Mitch replied, “Book me a flight to India, homie.”

We need to use our instruction minutes wisely.
Students can’t learn if they’re not actively engaged.
They’ll never fulfill our expectations if we can’t
stimulate them enough to pay attention.
As educators, it’s our job to…

I just stare at the spinning ceiling fans
imagining I was in Calcutta,
a transcendental passenger reflecting in a rickshaw
letting someone else earning meager pay lead me around,
so I can raise my hand and quizzically ask,

“Uh… What are we supposed to do again?”

(A previous version appears in Underground Voices Magazine)

National Championship

 

When the college star quarterback suffered a separated shoulder in the first
half of the prestigious bowl game named after an acidic citrus fruit and not

a fresh, scented flower, he bowed down, planted his hands on his knees and
wilted, realizing his first-team all-everything year would not have a hero’s

ending. When the young back-up quarterback was grabbed by his facemask,
pulled into the grizzled face of the head coach and told, Just go in and have

some fun, everyone knew what would happen. How many of us could take
the reins leading the team to victory at seconds notice? March our team down

the field for the winning score, ignoring the pressure suddenly saddled upon
our shoulder pads. Someday the young back-up blitzed from his blindside,

tackled into the earth’s entrails for four uneven quarters will be a star, parading
around the campus pecs protruding, conducting post-game interviews thanking

his lineman for giving him such good protection. His mom for driving him to
Pop Warner and sitting in the bleachers all those years. And God for allowing

him to excel at a game he loves. But this was today. And the other team had
bigger, badder lineman, brutes nasty enough to eat their mothers whole spitting

out their seeds, ensuring no nice bones from the family tree would ever grow
in their bodies, probably pretty goddamn good at it.

(Published days ago here)

I’m the Featured Poet of the month

for January at Chantrelle’s Notebook.  They were good enough to put up several of my poems, and will feature more next month.  Some of my favorite pieces are up, recently revised and all.  This is one such poem.  I wrote it a couple of years ago, but recently gave it a makeover.  Have a gander at the others.  It’s a really pretty site with some great artists. 

 

Blood Brothers

When we were ten
we pricked our index fingers,
strangled them, breathless,
until they became a bloody
Cyclops,
and sloppily bonded them together.

He moved four years later,
and I never saw him
until the other day,
bored at work
succumbing to
Facebook again.

His shaved head
mosaic skull tattoos
and double birds
made it difficult to
recognize my friend.

I recalled that day
in Ms. Barrett’s class
when we straightened
and sharpened staples
becoming family:

—The two-story, built-in pool, white boy
—The two bedroom, blow-up pool, Latino
“Brothers Forever…”

However
the emblazoned swastika
branded
on Kevin’s left wrist,
broadcast
we lost touch
long ago.

Fred Astaire’s First Ever Would Be Tweet to Ginger Rodgers

@GingerRodgers-shitted. showered. shaved. shall we dance?

(an actual published piece here)

October 17th

 

It was overcast and drizzling.

I hummed 99 Luftballoons
As I rode my ten-speed
Through impish puddles
On my way home from the gym.

It was like being 10.

Impatient cars raced by.
I peddled slowly,

Savoring the scent of sullen streets,

And progressed
To singing out the song,

Wishing
I knew German.

(recently published at Underground Voices Magazine)

Independence

 

It’s his first 4th of July alone.

Sovereign sky mimics
lusty fireflies playing tag;
blazing trails that zigzag
over family cookouts.

He orders out too much these days.
And his twin bed is bigger. Colder.

Tonight he makes shadow puppets
on the closet door.

They bounce to beats of intermittent booms,
under patriotic strobe light
sneaking through miniblinds
he bought on clearance
at Target.

Heat makes us all crazy.

The ceiling fan looks like an
overgrown Black Widow
who has just devoured her mate,

cackling at the concept
of visitation rights,
and alternating holidays.

(freshly published along with 2 others at Underground Voices Magazine)

The Other Side of Town

 

It’s 1 a.m. in September.
Three witches walk towards me
down Artesia Boulevard
armed with eyebrows like
my father’s temper.

I fear witches more than heights,
clowns, and spiteful waiters.

And they’re a month early.

I’ll tell them it was an accident;
I simply forgot to wash the dishes.

And I pulled out all the whiskers of
the black cat in the alley
because he bragged of his many lives.

My father had one.

Death and poetry
are related in life.
Bloodlines of realism so exaggerated,
it makes sense.

I decide to cut across the street,
pushing too real reveries
to the side,
like horrid vegetables.

(Originally published here- Gloom Cupboard)

NOT the University of Phoenix!

    

I just finished my first ten-day residency at Antioch University Los Angeles.  It’s a low residency MFA program, meaning: each semester for ten consecutive days students attend seminars, lectures, workshops, and readings on the actual campus.  These events begin at nine in the morning and end about seven at night, or so.  During this time students receive their writing mentor.  After the residency ends, students work independently.  We are given writing exercises/assignments, fifteen books to read, six poems a month to submit to our mentor, and engage in online discussions/workshops regarding various poetic craft issues.  It’s a two year program and one of the top five low residency programs in the country–and very expensive   I feel blessed to be here, and plan on doing great things.  The following is a poem born from my first writing exercise.  My mentor, Richard Garcia, gave a list of twenty things to include in the poem such as:  begin the poem with a metaphor, say something specific but utterly preposterous, make the persona or character in the poem do something he/she could not do in “real life,”close the poem with a vivid image that makes no statement, but that “echoes” an image from earlier in the poem, or the beginning of the poem.  I included most of the elements, and am fairly happy with the result considering.

 

Smoke and Mirrors

“Chisme is the devils’s teeth,” Aunt Lucy told me and my cousins
every time she caught us congregated in her garage gossiping about
our 6^th grade classmates.

Aunt Lucy—who formerly worked in Vegas as a “lovely assistant”
to David Copperfield (getting sawed in half at the head and hips,
disappearing from black boxes with tight lips) once cracked a raw
egg on my head when I was nine suffering from a 103 degree fever,
mashing it into my scalp with her fists claiming, “The energy from
the chicken’s kulo will calm the savory spirits simmering in his soul.”
Dientes del Diablo, Mijo

Who once lifted her third husband by the greasy v-neck of his
chorizo-stained undershirt (the uncle we weren’t allowed to talk
about) hurling him down a flight of stairs, then soared from the banister,
serrated elbow leading the way like a luchadore unmasked by the foe
sprawled semi-conscious, two cracked ribs, and one story below.

Who spent Saturday nights guzzling Coronas cursing the TV
during heavyweight fights, and Sunday mornings lamenting the loss
of her only lover we ever referred to as our uncle; rocking back and
forth in the chair he built for her and my cousin who died before we
ever met. Who kissed my forehead from her deathbed and simply said,
“Don’t believe everything you hear.”

Someday during someone’s birthday, or wedding reception, or
funeral, I’ll catch my nieces and nephews huddled together talking
about something I got reprimanded for talking about when I was
their age. I’ll be the pious Uncle of Profundity voicing sage sentiments—
“Hijos. Breadcrumbs are the Lord’s dandruff.” They’ll look at me
the way we did Aunt Lucy. As if I waved a magic wand, and pulled
a white rabbit from my ass.