Border Boy
I grew up on the border and though I left
I have brought it with me wherever I’ve gone.
Its line guides me, this long, winding thread of memory.
The border wasn’t as big as they say—
It fit neatly behind my eyes and…
Caminitos
The pathways of my thoughts are cobbled with
mesquite blocks
and narrow-winding,
long and aged like the streets of
san fernando de bexar
y la villa real de san antonio
pensive
y callados
cada uno con…
The Contract Says: We’d Like the Conversation to be Bilingual
When you come, bring your brown-
ness so we can be sure to please
the funders. Will you check this
box; we’re applying for a grant.
Do you have any poems that speak
to troubled teens? Bilingual is best.
Would you like to come to dinner
with…
Evolution of My Block
As a boy I bicycled the block
w/a brown mop top falling
into a tail bleached blond,
gold-like under golden light,
like colors of Noble Knights
’banging on corners, unconcerned
w/the colors I bore—a shorty
too small to war with, too brown
to be down for the block.
White…
[It would be neat if with the New Year]
It would be neat if with the New Year
I could leave my loneliness behind with the old year.
My leathery loneliness an old pair of work boots
my dog vigorously head-shakes back and forth in its jaws,
chews on for hours every day…
Ixmiquilpan, Hidalgo, México
1
Part of the simulation is not knowing
your coyote’s real name. Part of the simulation
is knowing your group could leave you
behind. Part of the simulation is knowing
that if you are left behind, a pickup truck
will take you back to your…
Manhunt or Ode to First Kisses
it was always the older kids
running to Riverside,
hiding behind trees and underneath
jungle gyms, holding their breath
in the darkness as the other team
tried to find them.
I could not wait to be old enough;
a captor’s arms clasping.
Manhunt, manhunt 1, 2, 3.
This poem…
Mi Casa
When I was a boy
I was either a child eating bugs
or a child being eaten by bugs, but
now that I am older am I a man
who devours the world or am I a man
being devoured by the world?
Someone once told…
My Father Sings, to My Embarrassment
at Las Villas, a small Carol City bar with a makeshift stage,
where he spends too much time drinking,
pretending he can learn to play the guitar at forty-five,
become a singer, a musician,
who writes about “Que Difícil Es….”
to live in Spanish in…
The Only Mexican
The only Mexican that ever was Mexican, fought in the revolution
and drank nightly, and like all machos, crawled into work crudo,
letting his breath twirl, then clap and sing before sandpaper
juiced the metal. The only Mexican to never sit in a…
Our Love on the Other Side of This Border
Maybe I would have seen you trip
over the steps in the patio in between
classes, or we would have met on the
soccer field covered in mud and you
would have asked my name, that crooked
smile spreading from your eyes to your
mouth. Maybe…
Saguaros
It was dusk for kilometers and bats in the lavender sky,like spiders when a fly is caught, began to appear.
And there, not the promised land, but barbwire and barbwire
with nothing growing under it. I tried to fly that dusk
after a…
This Is My Last Report
This is my last report:
I wanted to speak of existence, the ants most of all,
dressed up in their naughty flame-trousers, the exact jaws,
their unknowable kindnesses, their abyss of hungers,
and science, their mercilessness, their prophetic military
devotions, their geometry of scent, their…
“Un Tintero,” Inkwell
Anger is the other person inside
mi garganta, my throat.
…
We Are of a Tribe
We plant seeds in the ground
And dreams in the sky,
Hoping that, someday, the roots of one
Will meet the upstretched limbs of the other.
It has not happened yet.
We share the sky, all of us, the whole world:
Together, we are a tribe…