• • •
The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Bloodrock, Santana, The
Guess Who.
That smoker’s laugh everybody in 1969 thought was sexy: that
laugh-cough rough
in the depth of throat that was already racheting Tex Sherbet
into the grave & working
into Norma’s gentle chest.
Smelled like onions, that gal, couldn’t get the stink of onions out
of her hair, used up
a bottle of Breck every other day, even musk oil
when she dared be naughty like that
had a time trying to overwhelm the grill. When she didn’t smell
like onions
she smelled like bacon, I swear, & all she really wanted to do
was smell
like the ocean, like one of those hayfield breezes that slip out
of Kansas
before the purple stormclouds & wave through
fields like a flood you can see coming
for twenty miles. But she didn’t get
down to the beach—it would be a three-transfer bus ride
by herself through those neighborhoods
w/ those people, you know the ones
I’m talking about Al. & I like
to think some days after work, after
she pulled off the hairnet, misted
herself with cologne & creamed
her arms from a milky jar, my old man
would take her in his blood red Rambler
& light her smokes for her
before the hopeless freedom
of black & white
midnight seas.
9.
Old-time
Rs,
History-
Afflicted
Cldn’t
Afford a cuppa
Joe, so
Went to the wall
And sat out their days
Beneath the Rip
Van Winkle
Mural some hack
Painted all the way
Down lane 16,
Ol’ Rip
Hisself
Asleep
Under a tree & those
Frigging gnomes
Bowling
Their butts off
And the ol
D-timers
Scratched away
At crossword
Puzzles of their
Lives. Oh yes
My ol
D Man wanted
To die
Before he
Became one
Of them
And
By God
He
Did.
10.
My old man, leaking smoke from his nostrils.
My next door neighbor catching my old man
and Mrs. Sherbet & telling my mom.
Tex dead and in the hole.
Mrs. Sherbet gone in shame.
No more
Wayne Newton records!
watching the swingers in the Rip Van Winkle Room
& knowing if he could just get his organ in there,
Norma would love him forever: a snifter full of tips, a line
of tipsy honeys, and every time he played
“Red Roses for a Blue Lady,” he
could look down into the brutal light
of the burger grill from where he played
in mysterious red, and he would catch her eye—oh brother,
I’m telling you Norma looked just like
Patsy Cline—and he’d smile. He wouldn’t
have to say a word, that look would say it all, that one glance
would say Norma this one’s for you babydoll
my sweet Oklahoma girl, it’s for you
forever and only
for you. My old man at the shoe desk
shaking Quinsana into the shoes, dreaming
of green: dreaming of mango trees in Sinaloa, of parrot-
dizzy volcanoes
in sugar cane vastness, of
banda music chasing white egrets from the estuaries w/ their
tuba blasts,
of lime juice and banana slices in his fideo soup, of
girls now dead 20 years who once danced waltzes & rained
tiny sweat
across his arms who became grandmothers and were buried in
Tecuala,
Nayarit.
My old man, listing his compendium of sorrows, his ledger
of regrets,
among them: me.
Hookers worked the glass-jeweled alley behind the Brunswicks.
Pulled the chained doors apart enough to peek
inside, to whisper tender offers overwhelmed
by the machines. And Norma,
never been to Chicago, never seen Paris,
never been to New York City, never seen the Rockies,
couldn’t wash the yellow off her fingers, couldn’t shake
that cough,
would have gone home, said she would, said she’d
walk all the way home one day when she got good and tired
of these 16 lanes. But she didn’t.
She went to a small apartment in Normal Heights
when they tore the Hillcrest down,
& someone put her ashes on a Greyhound one day
in a paper-wrapped box: oh hell, I am the only
one left who remembers
her name.
Darling Phyl
July.
Fireworks tonight. This new life.
I remember now
That other life,
The life below.
Those ten
Ement years.
On our dead alley.
And Papá gone out to screw
Bowling alley waitresses
Again.
Mother too scared
Of pachucos and winos and
Gang-fighters and black men
To go into the dark
To the Shelltown park
To watch the rockets.
Papá had the 49 Ford
Though Mom couldn’t drive
Ten feet.
So what
Were we going to do
Anyway, jump
In the junky bus
And ride one mile
Through the concrete night?
10 o’clock and Ma
Wrapped us in blankets
To keep mosquitoes off
And we snuck
Thru the bldgs to the
Lord’s place and climbed
Halfway up, cement
Landing as cool as grass anyway
And we ate ketchup sandwiches.
She, a step above me,
Head thrown back, eyes
Up to the sky,
Searching, seeing dead ancestors,
Dead friends, seeing
The mysterious man who
Sent letters she kept hidden
In her drawer—he called her
Darling Phyl.
Fireworks.
But this is the real world.
It’s almost funny.
We couldn’t see a single firework.
All we saw was the ghost plumes
Of smoke angling away.
We heard the thunder.
All we saw was the color of the bombs
Reflected in the smoke.
The color, oh
The color
Lit the sky
And Phyllis
Dark as sorrow against it—
The color
Man it almost seemed
Beautiful.
HYMN
Hymn to Vatos Who Will Never Be in a Poem
All the vatos
sleeping in the hillsides
All the vatos
say goodnight forever
All the vatos
loving their menudo
All the vatos
faith in la tortilla
All the vatos
fearing the alarm clock
All the vatos
Wino Jefe Peewee
All the vatos
even the cabrones
All the vatos
down por vida homeboys
All the vatos
using words like ranfla
All the vatos
waking up abandoned
All the vatos
not afraid of daughters
All the vatos
arms around their sisters
All the vatos
talking to their women
All the vatos
granting their forgiveness
All the vatos
plotting wicked paybacks
All the vatos
sleeping under mota
All the vatos
with tequila visions
All the vatos
they call maricónes
All the vatos
bleeding in the alley
All the vatos
chased by helicopters
All the vatos
dissed by pinches white boys
All the vatos
bent to pick tomatoes
All the vatos
smoked by Agent Orange
All the vatos
brave in deadly classrooms
All the vatos
pacing in the prisons
All the vatos
pierced by needle lightning
All the vatos
who were once our fathers
All the vatos
even veteranos
All the vatos
and their abuelitos
All the vatos
proud of tatuajes
All the vatos
carrying a lunch pail
All the vatos
graduating law school
All the vatos
grown up to be curas
All the vatos
never been to misa
All the vatos
Jimmy Spider Tito
All the vatos
lost their tongues in Spanish
All the vatos
can’t say shit in English
All the vatos
looking at her picture
All the vatos
making love all morning
All the vatos
stroking their own hunger
All the vatos
faded clear as windows
All the vatos
needing something better
All the vatos
bold in strange horizons
All the vatos
waiting for tomorrow
All the vatos
sure that no one loves them
All the vatos
sure that no one sees them
All the vatos
sure that no one hears them
All the vatos
never in a poem
All the vatos
told they don’t belong here
All the vatos
beautiful young Aztecs
All the vatos
warrior Apaches
All the vatos
sons of Guadalupe
All the vatos
bad as la chingada
All the vatos
call themselves Chicanos
All the vatos
praying for their children
All the vatos
even all you feos
All the vatos
filled with life eternal
All the vatos
sacred as the Sun God
All the vatos
Flaco Pepe Gordo
All the vatos
rising from their mothers
All you vatos
you are not forgotten.