THE BODEGA

Rosa shoved another box of Bud Light
Onto the bottom shelf and slid the door shut.
Yet another crease dug into her crinkled browned forehead
As The Kid hopped into her bodega,
Dark eyes shining and rolling like glass marbles.
Rosa hoped he would leave fast without a mess, but
Maria smiled at him and ruffled his bouncy black hair;
Maria knew everyone.
Of course he only came for water balloons
To hurl like grenades at his friends in the park,
But now he saw Maria, popping her gum and
Rattling change in her long, manicured fingers.
Rosa shook her old head slowly and clicked her tongue,
Hobbling to the storeroom behind the counter.

SHOPPING

the man at the counter
asked if i needed help
as i fingered my way through
the store. i told him
no, i was just looking at
everything struggling for a spot
in my eyes.

then i wondered
if it was better
to be blind.

SELECTIVE PRESSURES

(for those who have been faced with obstacles
and evolved.)

the magician’s cloth
slithers through the
ring, and only the torn
threads are left behind, frazzled
mangled victims.

my speckled skin is
tough from brushing by metal
zippers on the subway train, and
every tourist is left
rubbed red and raw.

they will never come
to the city
again.

NOSTALGIA

after you tumble
down the ramp and
herd your luggage to the nearest
exit, you will look for me
where i always am, but
i will be where
i always was, throwing chunks
of cement into the
river.

MY HISTORY

my history
can be told through
weary scribbles on napkins, fluttering on the
table to be thrown out, the little annoyances
necessary evils to provide a
second-hand education to me
as a three-year-old, an accidental metaphor
of learning disposed
in trashcans or hand-me-down towns
littered with battered books, two words on each
page.
my history lies
in the flesh ripped from my knees and
absorbed by the pavement in the playground
and in the limp fraying band-aids
covering my pain, but it all went away
dissolved except for a white ghost clinging to
the surface, fading, the shirt washed
too many times with the wrong colors.
pressing my face to the glass of the
eternal washing machine, I see
the system flood, and
yank around the victims in a vicious circle,
every damp sock thwacked against the wall and
pulled back to repeat the cycle once again.
don’t worry, it draws in everyone, there is
No Child Left Behind.
my history now
wobbles on the edge, afraid to take the dive of suicide,
to leave behind my frozen photograph in front of me,
because my history lies
here where I was told every truth to tell,
and out there
my history
dies.

SUMMER IN SPRING

chains, rusty gates and
grids throb through my veins,
dotted with firetruck-clad kids climbing the slides
someday to be replaced with
elevators, a trot down the block to the nearest
stop.
today, my urban blood runs only through my veins as moist southern air
hazes my brain,
brewing and steeping
earthy wood breeze rippling
willow trees.
anti-government buttons studding straps straddling backs soak through
to the other
side, morphing, melding into pebbles and acorns scattered through sandy soil.
as the vents in these building blocks piled high
flicker yellow and shut to the shuddering chill, all traces of Georgia
and Florida oranges stiffen and bristle,
brittle and bony.
back to rusty ladders stacked against brick,
come back to the city sometime.

HERE

i am sitting here,
gazing into orange space here,
swinging my limp legs here,
a traitor, because

#1: i have gulped sour juice and let tiny bubbles of soda eat away at my tongue for my whole long childhood, and now i sit, pretending to be peaceful and wise like a silver-haired guru, sipping steaming passionfruit herbal tea.

#2: i have even betrayed the tea, absorbing any traces of lush, earthy flavor left in foamy, salty garlic knots.

#3: you are shuffling your feet somewhere, a black armband squeezing you like a supporting relative’s hand (though not offering much comfort), as i sit and watch stiff plastic shoes click by through the window.

#4: i know all this, but by admitting it here i somehow assume i am pardoned.

WALKING

as my feet scrape over abandoned chunks
of rubble from the narrow sidewalk,
i am still warm
having just jumped through the door,
either getting away
or coming back
to something I left
a long time ago.

i leave civilization as the park path
splits, but even so early, as the sky seems lit by dull fluorescent lamps,
there are
noises, the heavy bus giving a gritty sigh
from deep within, the shopping cart crunching the sidewalk,
chewing it as cereal is ground by molars.

the birds' little squeaks and quivers are
dimming, giving way to urban shuffles, but
i am not to blame, having ripped the jingling bracelets
from my wrist
before I left.

though suffocated in rubber soles, my feet
seep through to the earth below the cracked crust of pavement, and
since no one has claimed it before, it is
my earth for my toes to dig into.

turning my hunched back to the park, stale beer and
mutters from SUVs weave themselves a filthy cloth,
constricting every passerby in a slimy coat.

now where tree branches wear
caution tape bandanas and
flaky posters overlap on walls of plywood,
i regret leaving where
the sparrows at least twittered
in fear of being abandoned.

HEAL

something shivers under a
sweet film of
innocence.

curing, curling
back, revealing the
pale whiteness, blue
veins, untouched.

never ever will
heal, close, it remains
open, ripped, dissolving,
whiteness becoming filthy
gray.

covered, covered
only with
blackness, irony,
magnifying what is
to be hidden.

maybe someday
just
maybe, it will
heal, but who
knows? Maybe it
will retreat
fade…
fade……

ONCE

i’d cross over to the other side
of the street, with
fluttering blue nets
shading the gleam of sunny sweat on
young, frazzled disciples of urban peace.

i’d wander on the speckled, crumbling
path through the sparse ballfields
one more time, and
would keep myself separate from it all with
a stiff black coat fencing in my
exhaustion.

i’d pick up a small, ragged rock, but it’s
really not a rock, but a
piece of the pavement chipped
away that used to be slapped by rubber soles, and I
would
yank my arm back and thrust it
way, way out into the muddy, prickly
grass to lie and be
shaded
for
once
in a
lifetime.

HAPPINESS®

these are the golden years
right?
this is what we've all been waiting for
for all those dreadful dry gray eons without vaccines, liposuction and gasoline.

we se silver and gold, the black sheen of oil
fueling our whirring gleaming tanks of cars
we see colors, rainbow grease on the street and blue haze steaming from our lungs.

the little boy drinking the noodle soup
melts away into a soft-focused blend of red plaid and platinum hair
oh, so grateful for that bowl of noodle soup
small pleasures warm conscience subliminally.

a smooth flight to the tropics: priceless.
right? or is it $600.00 plus food, water, and other unexpected inconveniences like tipping the underpaid bellhop?
money can't buy happiness
right?
or have so many bought their way into money and power, drinking our willing blood by the gallon?

happiness: priceless plus luxury tax, goes to feed our violence and ignorance for those who have been and are passing, fading, gone gone gone.
wife by wife
husband by husband
children choking on their own dry screams
but we're happy, oh so happy, unaware, making our own lives, the optimistic hopeful family.
right?

THE DREAM

i landed on a cloud of pink polka-dotted squid
they asked me, "will you ever go back?"
their eyes flitted
and down i fell
onto an orange field
scattered with football-sized ice cream sprinkles
i bit into one
and tasted soup.
a red-eyed rabbit sailed down from the tye-dye sun
on a golden electric guitar
he told me,
"you're the chosen one"
and i obeyed his demented will,
dragging him to the land of amnesia.
at the checkered fence an old lady sat on a post
and blessed me with the knowledge
of confusion.
i won five awards for whistling a song
but i hummed it instead.
i swam through outer space,
when on the moon i met abe lincoln on a silver penny.
a talking egg with green corduroy pants marched across the craters and found me,
he handed me the pair of ageless red mary janes
and poked wise words into my ear
he said "go back to reality".
and i found out it was all a lie
my caramel badges melted on my nightgown
then i remembered it was what i always wanted.

THE END

"twenty nine...twenty eight..."
radio journalists scream in their quiet monotones,
the world is about to DIE.
mothers are grabbing little children,
waiting for a dusty boom to end their housewiving lives.

"twenty seven...twenty six..."
men are sweating,
quitting their jobs like birds swooping out of a swaying tree.
flags are burning
shimmering in patriotic waste
that our countries smothered over all of you
spreading sticky propoganda into the crevaces of your brains.

"fifteen...fourteen..."
teachers are panting
curled behind their cluttered desks
children scream at one another
not knowing each other for once.

"eleven...ten..."
we're all waiting, waiting
waiting for the big eruption
orange haze creeps up from the melting sun on the horizon.

"nine...eight..."
stores are being looted,
wrinkled fingers grip gleaming guns,
black-gloved hands toss foamy loaves of wonderbread into sacks.

"five...four..."
and for what?
there is no escape;
mars and venus are uninhabitable
the earth is gray with chalky mist.
why steal and stuff your stomachs?

"three...two...one."
fathers clutch their daughters' shiny hair
that report card wasn't so bad after all...
the end.