The Acentos Review

Fugitiva de Sueños

El avión aterriza, y mamá retrasa mis pasos.
Hace cuatro años perseguí esta astilla anglo-sajona. Sus brazos vadean por la quimera
Viscosa, metida hasta el cuello en expectativa vomitada.
Los días metamorfosean en sanguijuelas, mordisqueando mis párpados.

Vengo de la torre marfil, todo recibido.
Umrah becado por la propina de tres estrellas,
Viajando de acá para allá siete veces. Cada salto
mana más sed por mi propia raza. Deslumbrado por el arena extranjera,
doy testigo a videos borrosos,
--a padrinos tragando sus Tecates, calentando sus nudillos peludos con la parrilla bocona,
amordazada en leña. El humo, con su toz negro, calla el sueño fugitivo—
a mi mamá
esperándome
por la banqueta opuesta. 

Sería espejismo? Grito su nombre, y
desde ojos agotados
se forman lágrimas.
Aguas nacidas del sufrir.
Cuando la abrazo,
suspira la revelación:
Nuestro camino es una cuenca sin garganta,
No canta, sino derrama.

 

 

Gente-fication 

I

Ay querido paisano,
Anúnciate, quit muttering at police checkpoints
your maguey-laced name.
Cada madrugada, lavabas tus botas lodosas
El ablución campesina, hasta que el peso
Moneaba desde la cocina.
Con parched pockets,
cambiaste la semillla por corbata
y te despidiste del pueblo, 

Tongue tip-toeing el canto “       mañana      
                                                   mañana      
                                                            me iré.” 

Ay quierido paisano,
al-muttaqun,
Embarcaste en peregrinaje ciego
Un hostage hajj al norte ordenado
hegrira del migrante,
God’s children fleeing
the end of a powdered bullet

Esperando ‘fuera un Greyhound terminal,
Te persignas después de ver
slouched sneakers dangling off the rails.
Tus hijos nacen adentro
what once was only dreamt in revistas.

Ay querido paisano,
Esperaste sobresalir un día, instead
fathering a slum scribe. 

And I grasp the pen from pesticide hands
Within locked-up language, I appeal the sentence.
From project to project,
Counter-sue the meaning,
All I need is to do is change the stress.

Ay querido paisano
Resvalaba la bala
Its casing singed our adolescence,
Fat paleteros staked outside McNair
Telephone poles stapled with missing classmates
An 8^th grade half-skipped ‘cuz of bomb threats,

Chalked up skulls skulk my corner,
Dibujo con su polvo
Gashes to ashes
Blunts to dust,
My people tar and feather their lungs with
Second-hand self-doubt.
Veo sus rostros
sagging Christmas lights in July.
tired of taking them down, so
gnats greedily stave the darkness
emanating from hogres retirados
With that depressing-ass, naco blue 

II

 
Ay quierido barrio
I come off the freeway ramp,
Bear witness to skyscraped smallpox,
corporate offices built atop tienditas.
Columbus snuck back his ships, renamed the Santa María gentrification.
Accompanied by Indians, now the model minority,
as techie settlers declare my homeland
now “safe enough” to inhabit. 

I caught ‘em playing house at Ikea
--conveniently located at city limits —
My homeland their Etch n’ Sketch, dragging ottomans and quilt-feather pillows all
over
the sacred land—Inner city murals, la familia discounts, the getro PCS at the corner of East Bayshore and Donahue,
The Three Brother’s taquería with cold tortillas
where I’d always eat the foil—
leaving only the mortuary. 

They pace the cubicle room
measure their terra incognita’s square footage,
Only to discover me,
the outskirts of their insecurities.

Their colleagues cut a measly ribbon
Pat themselves on the back for offering us a new health clinic,
The press bravely announces East Palo Alto
as a ‘strategic location,’ in Silicon Valley,
Tech hubs like Facebook, Google, NASA Ames Research
Widely touted for being on the “cutting edge” 

Yet for all their sharp thinking, are oblivious
to how my whole life,
I watched them swing golf clubs
in lawns neighborhoods-long.
How I peeped into their dress rehearsal,
switching bloody cassocks for biker helmets,
and waded the San Francisquito Creek—
50 feet of dried-up earth
separating our skin.