BIO
JD Debris is a Boston-based poet, songwriter, recording artist, and member of neo-soul artist Qwill's touring band. While an undergrad at Salem State University, he has released his debut solo album "Black Market Organs" on Simple Truth Records, won the individual slam at the Mass Poetry Fest, published poems in Soundings East and The 5-2 Crime Poetry Review, and played shows up and down the east coast. http://www.jddebris.com.
Chico Corrales
You could fit a bouquet of
snakes inside his sleeve
& still leave room for his
arm to swim.
A marvel of compaction, how his
muscles, after
endless reps, refused to
expand, just coiled
tighter & tighter, like DNA
strands
around girded steel. The way his
snake-arms swung while running,
breaking into an impromptu
shadowbox,
natural reflex recalibrated to
kill.
*
Her black eye matched his
as she placed her palm against
the glass
partition, ear to the
receiver.
Young marriage balanced on
bloodsport,
(red wine glass frozen
mid-shatter
above the mattress)
precarious as waiting for brain
damage
to start showing its symptoms.
*
Chico, untranslatable to the
language
of brute force, 5'10",
fatless, & hummingbird-swift.
The metaphor of his body's
steel no match
for the real article: bars
boxing him in,
highway divider splitting his
sport bike in two,
his body in pieces. No coach's towel to wipe
the blood away. No bright
lights above. Among
the wreckage, Chico, do you
flash back to an earlier war?
Every bruise on your body a
purple heart, then.
Now, just pale blue patches
beneath coroner's gloves.
*
Envision it: Vegas in the
spring, final stretch
of your first Castillo war.
Coach, towel draped
over his paisley-polyester
collar,
shouts your Christian name over
the drunken roar
"Diego Diego Diego!"
as you spit out your mouthpiece
in a desperate grab for a few
more hellspent seconds.
Coach wipes it on his towel,
saying
"You better get inside him
now" & your teeth,
Chico, clamp down on the
plastic.
*
Chico, all smiles, championship
belt
slung over his shoulder,
crowd-surfing
a swelling entourage around the
ring,
snake-arms extended towards the
sky.
Later, at the hospital, they
take a urine sample
& it looks like a bottle of
tomato juice.