Da Bronx
Hannah’s face glows with a strange, eerie light
above the Xerox — thirty copies of a 250-page
deposition. She’ll be here all night. She sighs. Working in midtown,
living in Bushwick, a crazy double life
she shares with janitors, secretaries, doormen.
In Brooklyn, blackbrownred boys
roam streets like wild game, every day is high
season for cops, every two blocks a hunt, a catch, a kill ~
or a cage ~ lock ’em up, throw ’em away…
Yesterday, Gina, an Italian paralegal who chain-
smokes by the fire escape, said there’s an opening in her building.
Good people, she puffs. Nunna that crazy shit.
Up in da Bronx, way up, on the #6, one bedroom.
Hannah dreams about it on her ride downtown.
Apt.
Got it with her good credit!
One bedroom. Carpets, not wood.
Oh well, can’t have everything.
Right off the #6.
Up, past the hundreds.
An hour from the city.
Forty minutes on the express,
Gina offers. A lifetime
from Bushwick.
Hallelujah! Yeah, there’s drugs
& madness up there too — Hunts Point,
etc., but Angel don’t know those cats.
He only hangs with his crew.
October first move-in date. She can’t wait.
Rollerblades
A week before they move to the Bronx,
Hannah plans a picnic at Central Park.
If it’s not too cold, they’ll spread a blanket
on the Great Lawn,
eat turkey & cheese sandwiches
with Italian bread, then rollerblade
at Seventy-second Street, where people
bop & swing in jazzy circles
to big headphones. 3:00 p.m. A date.
She waits with her food-heavy JanSport
as skaters whirl & turn
in spandex blurs.
Dizzy. She smiles,
bright neon buzzing past her.
Bullet
For eight hundred dollars, Leo kills his brother-in-law
on a Sunday. Sun a switchblade
paring people to paper-thin slivers; they
squint, flash in the harsh light. Blaze, tall,
green-eyed, serenades Jessie on her stoop,
all pero mami, escúchame, while Leo plays cool diagonal
across Jefferson Street until he raises his heat.
His flint-hard face won’t flinch as all
four shots–brrah-brrah-bbrah-brrah — instar
Blaze’s bicep. Neck. Shoulder. Chest. Blaze’s jaws open;
say nothing. Jessie covers her hair, screaming,
crawls behind the hydrant. Four slugs roll under Googie’s car,
dead copper bees. Angel’s fist eats
them like a Venus flytrap. He shoots like a bullet from the scene.
Arrest
Her stomach sinks. Beni says,
He’ll be at Central
Booking, ma, or at the Seventy-fifth Precinct.
Catch him before they ship him to the Island.
Once again the ground
swells under her feet,
threatens to capsize her. She’s
broke. Gives blood
to get cash, calls Soli a week later,
goes on an all-night mission
to find him. What kind of God won’t
give us a minute’s break before
letting waves crash down again?
Hannah talks
loud & fake with Soli,
but inside, her heart dull-aches.
Bail (Angel)
It’s 5:28 a.m.
They give me back my shirt, my
jeans, my Guess watch, and
Hannah
bails me out. She’s taking me
home. Never knew I missed
the smell of her neck until
she hugged me.
Didn’t know
I missed
so much.
Didn’t know I loved the peach parts
of sky, like soft sighs in the
morning air.
Or the smell of roasted peanuts,
how it gets caught in the back of
my throat.
Didn’t know I loved
windows giving back a
mirror when lit
with more sky, more sky
in every eye. I didn’t know
I loved trees, all five of them
on this block, waving
leaves
like greenfingers.
I remember hiding
under one’s shade while
papi stuffed a brown
bundle down my jeans &
kissed me on the forehead before
I ran to make his deliveries.
I didn’t know I loved the
wind, how cool it feels against
my skin, pushing me when I run,
always running. I
didn’t know I loved taxis.
God bless this girl, her easy
twenties. I didn’t know I loved
my own room,
Mickey Mouse frames,
Puerto Rico flag, my
shirts, towels, torn, but mine.
Didn’t know I loved her
feet, toes curling climbing me as
if I were a tree. Didn’t know I loved
her hands, so small, we touch
to make a prayer.
My palms swallow hers,
tiny, beautiful hands
how soft, they touch
the sides of my face,
my temples, my twin peaks, my eyelids,
as if my face is a
loved thing. I close
my eyes so she
won’t see ~
she kisses
my eyelids, undoes
each shirt button like a wish
and I let go, let her
keep opening,
undressing,
undoing
me
Until the day breaks
and the shadows flee,
turn, my beloved,
and be like a gazelle
or like a young stag
on the rugged hills.
~ Song of Songs
IV.
Invierno
Winter
“Turn your eyes from me, they overwhelm me,” lover,
you, who once drank from my heart’s cup of water,
we’re both parched now. Sere & spent.
Tired trees bent, God, how fast the years went
like a sad movie you rewind again &
again to make sense of the chaos & the tragic end…
But unlike the trusty Romeo & Juliet,
our heroes don’t commit suicide or surrender just yet
(though Hannah cries over her barren
insides and her fallen Angel, she still tries
to remember the words of Nina Simone’s
man-cry — “I gotta lotta livin’ to do before I die —
but you just do what you gotta do, my wild sweet
love…” for Self, for Life, for Ancestors above — )
Dear Audience, the sad truth is: Time passes
too fast but You, yes, You — Live and Love to the last.
Warm
Late November, they wait for the J train
on the swaying platform. Iron
poles shiver and stars glint like mica.
Angel’s boot cracks a vein into a sheet of iced rain.
He shoulders a sharp-toothed wind
while coats shuffle into Al’s Liquor
Shop, a stray pit barks, and his mother
lies limp in a sickbed in Bushwick.
I’m cold, Hannah says. Angel bends down,
blows breath into her palms. He kneads her fingers
and warms them in his cave-mouth.
God, so gentle, she thinks,
how dark, how deep his eyes.
Snow falls like white stars into his curls.
Crooked
After she bails Angel out, Hannah finds out he’s not home free.
Cops, they try to get him to give up the killer’s name,
but he’s no snitch. So they planted two bags of coke on me, ma
he says — and they’re threatening to put me away,
to lock me up in rehab, for not giving up my tío’s name.
He had scooped up the bullets to get rid of evidence
and got stuck with a wack deal — snitch on familia
and risk a bullet from Blaze in revenge, or cop
