“Tell you what.”
He spits. He hooks the winded Jeep’s lip.
Lifts it from the sand. Guts
the drive train out of it and tosses it
in the Chevy rig.
“I’ll strike you a deal right now.
I’ll tow you 40 mile out of here
For $90 cash money.”
• • •
The Jeep fights the hook, bucks
all the way over Starr Pass,
rocks us like a rowboat in chop.
Bravo says: “You been to Ohio?”
Ohio?
“Ohio, man. They got a blue hole down there,
gobble you up.
Just this bottomless pit
fullup with cold water.”
We could share with him something about
bottomless pits.
“One time they dropped weights down in ’at sucker—
they went down
and down
kept goin and goin.
Seems a fella tried to swim a team of horses
crosst there and they sunk to the bottom.
Come up, later over to
New Hampshire.”
He spits.
“I shit you not.”
He shifts right between her knees.
“This guy I know, he ran into a fourteen foot
catfish in this one dam.
I gone down there fishin
and this dude pulls up in a tow truck
and slaps a bigass pot roast on the hook
and winches it out and drives up the beach
and pulls himself out a six foot
bass.”
Bravo breaks down
three times on the road.
He gets out and sticks his head
into the Chevy’s mouth.
Inside,
we fight.
“I caught a jet-jockey over to my wife’s place.
I threw his ass in the pond.
He’s like, I don’t want no trouble.
And he covers up like a boxer.
I’m like, Well trouble done come.
So I break his arm in three places.
And I break his jaw in two places.
And I say to my wife,
You better get out here—your boyfriend’s
in the pond getting all wet.”
Pulling into Benson, he tells me
the astounding news: “Mexicans
tear open their own shirts
as a sign of grief.”
Bravo
takes all my money.
He unhooks the Jeep and leaves me in the sunset desert
with my drive train still
in his truck.
Car hopeless—dead in the dirt.
Just like that first wife
drove off one later summer.
But that year
I would just start to walk.
I would walk till it was dark, dark,
until the stars sifted like sugar
down the naked peaks
and I would not pause
to tear my clothes.
Codex Colibrí
Ce anáhuac,
sweet ome-Chi-kah-go:
pure rust spires prairied
to the trust of the wind,
lake effect snow trussed
to glass-eyed towers
staredown falcon nests
on ledges above Lago Michigan
sacrifice hearts of palomas
dive from balcony pent
houses: gold caves for tribes
of bankers, high potted gardens
geraniums, tomatoes, pot
reaching for dawnlight:
• • •
splayed corpses of polluted
doves on Wacker among walkers
among hungry mazehuales
sleeping in boxes of old
hi def Toshiba 60”
ritual screens.
Tochtli xihuitl: the winter count
breaks into days that carry light
from morning to Grant Park
to the great Tlaxochimaco, offering
of flowers, blossoms bust
open blacktop ruins where Cabrini
fell: xochitl dandelions bob
yellow faces by the plains of
diamonds—green, blue, ice clear
bottles slammed to gravel
• • •
crumbled to gemstones by
police cars and kicks:
yei the river flowing
the wrong way,
nahui the river
turning green.
Macuilli: here now too
colibrí y libélula
circle the ponds,
rattling atls in brindle light:
small lightning in foundry smoke
skies: chasing expressway drivers
laid out in Patagonian rivers
rushing steel rapids:
all those morning speeding wings
calling us
to love
this world.
The Signal-to-Noise Ratio: Chicago Haiku
Jackson & Harlem
I will fuck you up
Come back here motherfucker
You ’bout to get served
#
Ogden & Western
Oil change and filter—
$39 Special!
Coffee and donuts
#
Chicago Sun-Times
Killed wife, girl, in-laws—
Several hard hammer-blows—
Insulted manhood
#
WLS 890 AM
• • •
I’m the decider
Conservative Compassion
I’m the uniter
#
Grant Park
Pigeon on the ice
Picking at yellow vomit
Of homeless soldier
#
South Loop
Do I transfer here
To catch the Orange Line?
I’ll get fired for sure
#
Between Austin & Roosevelt
Paletas frescas!
Tacos, tortas, menudo!
Go back home, beaner!
#
Biograph
Lady in Red’s ghost
Can’t escape alley’s mouth:
Johhny Dillinger
#
South Racine
Why you stone trippin
Babygirl I aint pimpin—
Got your back for reals
#
Lake Forest
Dave Eggers lived here
And he was a gentleman
I taught him English
#
Airport
Security check
Remove your shoes and jackets
Welcome to O’Hare
#
Millennium Park
Do you know Jesus?
If you were to die tonight
Would you go to Heaven?
#
Proviso East High School
• • •
Hallways full of ghosts
From Chicago to Detroit—
No Child Left Behind
(asshole)
graylid Chicago
6 a.m. / caught
in ruins of
Route 66,
hogtied:
one more
red
light,
Ogden
Austin.
steamtailed
cars. No
vember
here already
damn
talk radio.
city drizzle
icing
streets
color of
bad
styrofoam
coffee.
concrete hot
dog
on
a roof:
neon script
ure—“It’s
A Meal
In
Itself!”
plastic onions,
chili, latex
mustard, mayo—
not
mayo, pigeon
shit.
rust bridge
chopped to
chunks
by semi
strikes
bears Central
way down—
blasts of bullhead
diesel freight
trains:
F-18 locos
lug tankers
from slots
behind the candy
refinery
capping the hood:
sugar
sludge
glugs
out the top
as it rocks (clack
eting, clack
eting). boxcars
rattle
with Lemonheads,
Atomic
Fireballs.
hiballing (clacketing,
clacketing)
from Cicero
unzipping
buried prairies
sugartrain (clack
eting,
clack
eting)
spooks
tenement rabbits—tear
out from
dead car lots
faster (clacket
ing) thru
cornfields
frost charred
where the pigs
were slaughtered, where
the legions
of cows were
dropped—
rattlebrown
now.
across
the Big Muddy
yellow-eyed
cyclops closes
on KC—half-frozen
cattle
blowing steam like
smokers
look up—
klaxon blast
and horn—
clacket
clacket
clang
of cross road
drop-arms
chopping off
traffic / red /
light / red / light / red
light
bells.
some asshole
in a flatbed Ford
jerks it
round the arm
gotta beat the clock
drops it
into first
big rush
to get these flywheels
to Berwyn:
these OK City
pumpjack gears
to the main yard—
he
stomps the clutch
frog-jumps
half
way across the track
stalls
on the hump
with a rodeo
kick.
& the loco’s
coming on.
& the F-18’s
big as God’s
cowboy boot
about to kick
a pickup game
field goal.
talk
radio warning
about Democrats
Socialists
Mexicans—
black angels
take to the sky.
watchers
in stormclouds.
horn
howls
as he works
the key, dances
a two-step
on the pedals, pages
of yearbooks
flutter
through his mind
Oh Prudence:
ground shaking
truck gasps, coughs,
dies again—
thermos rolls
off the dash
splashes him
with hot java
COME ON
COME ON
COME ON
& the klaxon
sings
& the clang clang
& the coffee burns
& the F-18
covers
the sun—
• • •
just another morning
going to work—
man,
it ain’t
my fucking
day.
Incident Report
In front of the public
Library where all
These Mexicans were hiding
Between bookshelves
Learning el inglés
So they could move
On up the Americatree
Where better fruit
Dangled
Didn’t have to be picked
By their chapped wooden hands
And where words
Were a religion—my own
Father had come home
From tuna canneries
Dripping scales and cold
Blue blood to
Smoke and hunker
Over his Webster’s
Memorizing the dictionary
Five pages a week: Adirondack,
Beelzebub, Carnation,
Diphtheria—
A tall fat
Library cop
Radio-hooked to
ICE
Shuffled up the marble
Stairs: all brown eyes
Stared—
Came to a stop
Behind his belly big
As a bedroom TV
In an orchard owner’s
House—
Looked into
The rheumy mug of a
40 year old white
Come inside to avoid the heat
To use the toilets
Maybe
Even read—
Stinking
Worse than any ten
Tomato-hoe wetback-broken
Paisanos
At noon in Santa Ana winds:
He stood, lipping
A spit-soaked Camel
And said
“What
I
Done?”
OUT
Said the cop.
“I ain’t
Did
Nothing!”
OUT.
Mexicans
Eased past him, looking
At the window, the floor,
Smart enough
To erase their faces,
Breaths held
Like Aztecs braving
The stench of Cortez
And his legion unwashed
For years—
• • •
Mexicans scared
Into grinning
At the cop shouting
OUT
Powerwagons on the way
By now,
Ay sí, ya
Nos chingaron—
And here they all were
Illegally farming
Words—
“I’m Amorcan and you can’t
Do nothin’ to me! I got
Rights!”
YOU BETTER SHUT IT
And numbers flew thru his radio
Into the California air
Calling back-up—
Riot in the Adult Non-Fiction
Reading Room.
“You”
The drunk said,
“You fucken
Shit!”
A Mexican
With gold teeth
Had his finger
In a Mark Twain,
Imagine that, and
Said, “¿Qué dicen?”
“You’re a prick,” said the bum
“Just like my prick father
Cannelli!”
Oh, the Mexican said
An Immigrant—
Women veered away
Looking startled
“I dint do shit
I got a right
To use the fucken lieberry just like these
Beaners right here
And I got a right to use
&n
bsp; The can like any other
White man!”
“Mexicans and me,
We got the right
To use any can we want to—this
Is Amorca for Godsakes.”
And through the high old windows
The sky was beautiful,
It reminded everybody of
Pátzcuaro—
They held books of common prayer,
Books of cartoons, books
Of massacres of Mayas in Guatemala—
Memories of holy dreams
Lined up like macheted coconuts
In jungle ditches, big black
Beautiful Mexican sun cooking
The skin of young girls laid out
In alleyways with one red blossom
In each unlined forehead—
They wondered
How the same sun comes up
On sinner and saint,
On peasant and priest,
How clouds can ache
In the blue like that, even
When there are no words to sing it,
How life runs on, runs
Like a stream through cactus forests,
Life without effort
Life without end
Taking every child to the darkest
Bend in the river and giving
A shove—
Life
As if everyone could learn
The words
To save us.
Canción al final de un día de sombras
cielo nublado
tragandose a los pájaros
encobijando
al mundo entero
movimiento
gris
grueso y
silencioso
suenan guitarras todavía
en las cantinas
de el más allá
ese rumbo
que jamás será nombrado
y me pican la mente
las voces
y me siguen
sombras borrachas
con pasos lentos
son pacientes
esos desgraciados
y vamos
por calles abandonadas