no one could shut down.
GRADUATION DAY
Today, I am the first person
to graduate the 8th grade in my family.
I almost didn’t. Last week, I got into a fight
with a girl ironically named Dulce.
I caught Dulce staring at me. I don’t really know why
but you’re not supposed to let people look at you
for too long. If you let them keep staring
who knows what else they’ll try to get away with.
What are you looking at?
is always a fair warning shot before the fists.
A chance for them to look away or explain themselves.
A chance for you to be unseen.
Remain hidden to someone
who might have noticed too much about you.
Like that you’re wearing Payless sneakers
or that you might be homeless.
The Bible says you’re supposed to
turn the other cheek
but Dulce must have missed that verse
and punched me in both
before I even had the chance to offer one.
All I could do was swing like I was trying to fly away
maybe back to some heaven
before I learned the anger in my hands.
Mami was furious when she got the call
& had to beg the school to let me graduate.
She couldn’t afford the bus fare to see me
walk across the stage.
But I accept my diploma
in honor of the fight Mami won.
MY LIFE AS A SALSA SONG
UN VERANO EN NUEVA YORK
I know school is out and it’s summertime when the corner of the block is peppered with old men massaging their domino tables like they’re apologizing to their side chicks for being gone for so long while the block DJ sits one leg out the driver’s side of his Honda Civic blasting old music through a duct-taped window ’cause all the new hip-hop sucks except for maybe Jay-Z and maybe a few of those new Marc Anthony joints but only ’cause he’s basically a legend though he’s no Fania All-Star or nothing pero everybody knows if you stick around long enough and refuse to leave what you love basically becomes something you can’t let go of which is why Mami left Papi ’cause you can love something until you die but that doesn’t mean you have to let it kill you around here all of us play like we are safe even when we are not we run nowhere and everywhere & damn it feels like we could take over anything it feels like we own this place everyone has forgotten and is trying to leave so maybe being Puerto Rican means you some kind of legendary because you are the product of what happens when two people leave the island and make love in an abandoned apartment building in Brooklyn but not so abandoned that they can’t live there just abandoned enough to be ignored by everyone but the sun blasting through the broken window like a song.
ESTRELLA GOT PLANS TO MAKE IT OUT
On the first day of summer
Estrella spills her body
all over the stoop
so it remembers her
when she leaves.
She’s dyed her hair red
& it looks like a dying sunset or
one of them Bushwick fires Señor Maví told us about.
I laugh and frown at the visuals in my head.
Estrella tells me to fix my face.
Around here we gotta walk around with the ice grill
so nobody will try to talk to us. I hear Papi’s voice.
Men don’t like angry bitches.
Estrella only flirts
with the real drug dealers.
The ones who can maybe get her out of here.
Seems like that’s where everybody wants to go.
Out of here. Even the drug dealers
are only dealing ’til they can make enough
money to bounce.
In the meantime, Estrella
wears their gold chain
A glimmering decapitated Jesus
dances around her neck.
Estrella got all the girls on the block heated.
Who does Estrella think she is?
Estrella thinks she is everything
Mami wanted to be.
Estrella thinks she is nothing
like Mami wanted her to be.
Estrella might look like burning afternoon
but inside she will always be winter.
PIRAGÜERO VS. THE LIMBER LADY
Everybody knows
who el piragüero is
’cause he is a man
you can’t miss,
pushing around a carrito
that looks like he figured out
a way to jack the rainbow,
use it as an umbrella,
paint his icee cart with it &
pour it over a pyramid
of shaved ice to sell back to you.
I know that sounds real impressive.
But the real talent here
lives mad quietly on the third floor
of the most dangerous
building on the block.
A Puerto Rican flag on the window
lets you know that the limber lady
is open for business & all
you have to do is yell &
a bucket tied to a rope
travels out the window carefully
avoiding crashing into the
duct-taped second floor window
where the bucket has been
previously snatched from
bored-ass kids who find it
funny to see us wait for something
that will never arrive. Anyway,
if it makes it past the second
floor the bucket still has to make it
over the yellow bodega awning
until it gets to me swinging
back & forth like Mami does
when she’s at the Check Cashing
spot waiting to be paid & so
I pay the bucket & watch it
float back up like Mami floats
when she’s sure she can
pay the rent this month, up, up, up
it goes to get my limber
avoiding the same traps
that could still kill it on the way up.
SUMMER LUNCHES
The teachers say you have the power to choose
where your life is headed.
the long-ass summer lunches line.
When does that power kick in?
Maybe it’s activated by a specific food
like how spinach moves through Popeye’s stomach
and arms and suddenly he got super strength.
My styrofoam lunch plate don’t got no spinach
but maybe in the hood the power lies
in peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I finish my sandwich and wait
for my strength to kick in.
My stomach rumbles but not in a powerful way.
Maybe I didn’t eat enough.
I wait on the line for seconds.
NEW WORDS/AFFECTION/
A FEELING OF LIKING AND CARING FOR SOMEONE OR SOMETHING
The park and Mami have similar names.
Both heavy on the tongue.
The kind of name that’s mad long for no reason.
This small connection to Mami makes me feel
like I could be the park’s daughter too.
Like it could make up for Mami’s cold ways.
On the days Mami refuses to hug me,
m
y body melts into the heat from an aluminum slide.
I join the park’s summer youth table hockey tournaments
just to see if I am better at winning something
other than Mami’s affection.
Even if I don’t win,
for a moment,
I am good at existing.
I am celebrated for trying.
YELLOW TAPE
Yellow tape usually means
something wild happened on the block.
Someone died again or there was an accident
and we need to find a way around it.
The yellow tape usually goes away
after a few hours so we can sit with the illusion
that everything is safe on the block again.
Estrella and I look out the window at the yellow tape
that decorates the entrance to our block.
From our third-floor window it almost looks like a bow.
The cops are asking anyone who tries to cross
the tape for ID like the employees
at the Toy Drive do right before
they give you your present.
I look for the dark truth of an accident
or a dead body but the block
is a calm bright gift waiting to be claimed.
That’s mad weird since
we’ve never been anyone’s prize.
HOW WE GOT OUR NAMES
JEFFERSON STREET
Since the block is on lockdown
and everyone had to show ID in order
to cross the police tape
that means G has to meet his clients
one block over on the block named after the dude
who said all men are created equal
& I wonder if he had any of us in mind
when he wrote that.
MY LIFE AS A SALSA SONG
PERIÓDICO DE AYER
Today I found out the library has old newspapers.
I disagree with Héctor Lavoe
that yesterday’s newspapers have no value.
I want to read all of them.
History in school is mad boring.
But history in the newspapers
doesn’t feel like history at all.
It feels like I’m eavesdropping
on everything that happened yesterday
so that I’m prepared for what may happen tomorrow.
THE NEWS ARTICLE IS ABOUT HOW HOPELESS WE ARE
NEW YORK TIMES,
OCTOBER 6, 1993
Nobody talks much about Bushwick. It’s just a tired, old, poverty-racked neighborhood in Brooklyn where adults without jobs move listlessly from one boring day to the next, and the police have to close off streets to slow the high-energy encroachment of youthful drug dealers, and the children, of whom there are many, find it difficult to dream because their days and their nights are so often disturbed by the sound of gunfire.
The kids in Bushwick grow up knowing that life is a crapshoot, which means you may not grow up at all. The walls of many buildings are covered with huge and disturbing murals—elaborate graffiti memorials to friends and playmates who died from a bullet to the head, a knife in the heart, and so on.
IF THE NEWS ARTICLE WAS ABOUT POLICE BRUTALITY
██████████████████████ Bushwick. It’s ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ where adults without jobs move listlessly from one boring day to the next, and the police have ███████████████████████ slowed the high-energy █████████████████youthful █████████████████████ children, of whom there are many, who find it difficult to dream because their days and their ██████████████████████████████████████████████████████
██████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████ playmates died from a bullet ██████████████████████████████████ and so on.
IF THE NEWS ARTICLE WAS ABOUT HOW HOPEFUL WE ARE
█████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
The kids in Bushwick grow up. █████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
███████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████████
THE BLOCK IS HOT
The Devil
used to be an angel named Lucifer.
According to the Bible
him and a whole bunch of his angel homies
tried to take over God’s neighborhood
and a turf war broke out.
God won and as the winner
he got to keep the entire heaven with all the dope clouds
and the harps and the gold streets and shit.
As the loser, the Devil got kicked out.
Thrown into the hottest place God had created
just in case some shit like this ever went down.
Estrella is now in charge of warning Jesus
when there are undercover cops on the block.
If this were a biblical war
the cops and the corner boys would shoot
jabs at each other over who was Lucifer
but everybody would agree
that this neighborhood is hot as hell.
VOICES
Mami is acting weird. At night she calls me
and whispers: Sarai, they are here again.
I hear some voices outside but it’s the summer
& warm weather is when Bushwick is most alive.
I tell her to get some sleep.
I promise they’ll be gone in the morning.
WE RAN OUT OF TOOTHPASTE
It’s Sunday & Mami says the Devil is using me.
She whispers a curse or prayer under her breath