BY LORNA DEE CERVANTES

Night Magic (Blue Jester), 1988, by Carlos Almaraz

Blue that I love you

Blue that I hate you

Fat blue in the face

Disgraced blue that I erase

You lone blue

Blue of an alien race

Strong blue eternally graced

Blue that I know you

Blue that I choose you

Crust blue

Chunky blue

Moon blue glows that despise

You — idolize you

Blue and the band disappears

Blue of the single left dog

Blue of the eminent red fog

Blue that I glue you to me

You again and again blue

Blue blue of the helium

Bubble of loveloss

Blue of the whirlwind

The blue being again

Blue of the endless rain

Blue that I paint you

Blue that I knew you

Blue of the blinking lights

Blue of the landing at full tilt

Blue of the wilt

Flower of nightfall

Blue of the shadow

In yellowed windows

Blue of the blown

And broken glass

Blue of the Blue Line

Underlines in blue

Blue of the ascending nude

Blue before the blackness

Of new blue of our winsome

Bedlam Blue of the blue

Bed alone: blue of the one

Who looks on blue of what

Remains of cement fall

Blue of the vague crescent

Ship sailing blue of the rainbow

Of wait blue that I whore

You — blue that I adore you

Blue of the bluest door

Blue my painted city

In blue (it blew.)

BY BRENDA CÁRDENAS

Placa/Rollcall, 1980, by Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez If the city was a body, graffiti would tell us where it hurts.

— Charles “Chaz” Bojórquez And this block would shout, “Nos diste un chingaso, cabrón. Mira esta cara rota, these baton-cracked ribs, this black and blue street dizzy con gente: blades, kiki, larry, snow, enrique, connie, elton, king, david, kelly, jeff, ratón, chaz, los de aquí, los de abajo. This roll call won’t be silenced, not by glock, not by chokehold. This is our temple of runes, our tomb — its glyphic curve and flow, calligraphic code writ acrylic. This, our relic, our scroll unrolled in catacombs, our flecks of subtext still buzzing después de que vayamos con La Pelona. ¡qué lucha, loco! Ven, baile con nosotros to the aerosol’s maraca y hiss, al punk en español’s furious sweat. Hang your head out the window y dale un grito tan lleno de duende that it cracks the pavement, summons our dead to dinner. Turn the tonal kaleidoscope. Then pause, catch your breath, so you don’t miss the illegible moment where all the mystery lives. There, de-cypher that!”

                                                “a shit-ton of bats”
                                                —Javier Zamora (Austin, July 2015)

                                                for my fellow cantomundistas

Our freestyle flows like “a shit-ton of bats”
(to steal a phrase from Javier Zamora).
Taxonomists of capital flora,
we barnstorm the city with verbal gats
and take aim at the hedge-fund plutocrats
trolling us on social-justice fora.
Freedom is a flick of the fedora
(they own our land but not our poets’ hats).
Looking for a city to get lost in,
we were dreaming when we came upon it.
Its border? The bodies that we crossed in,
cursing in street Spanish (not “doggone it!”).
Much like the Chiroptera of Austin
we tag a bridge with our sonar sonnet.

What’s in a shit-ton? (I’ll ask Zamora.)
It’s hard to count amid the faceless frats.
After a few palabras and true dats
we explorer-poets channel Dora.
No map. No app. Surveying ahora.
Where are the bodegas and laundromats
amid the loft-conversion ziggurats?
What gives a place its iconic aura?
(Hint: it’s not about ironic flannel,
artisanal cupcakes or IPAs,
a meme workshop or a hashtag panel
for zombie PhDs and MFAs.)
Our dream streets broadcast on a batchannel
whose batsignal reverberates for days.

Barrio echolocution sounds like bats,
bachata Petrarchs wail for their Laura,
Tejano dive bars bleed raza sonora.
Must mohawk’d jípsters with designer tats
sip ten-buck drinks to wax DJ ersatz?
We want sounds not streaming on Pandora,
beat-spelunkers aiming for aurora,
moonwalking in chancleta hi-heel flats.
In Spanish bat’s murciélago (blind mouse?),
I see us all in the bear-soaked moon though:
we bump and grind and Lupe owns the house
and Sandra swings, that reggaetón tune though…
so much floricanto in our mundo
because there’s no teoría without caos.

El Gúgol says they’re “Mexican free-tailed,”
the bats that “migrate” to that Congress bridge
not called my back but someone’s privilege
(think Congress and the suits they’ve never failed
and the corporate corpses they’ve retailed).
Electorally they’ll speak “our” language:
“Yo jablo un poquitou.” (Not a smidge.)
But who are the deported and surveilled?
Who owns our urban archipelagos?
Words privatized. Once the escuela goes,
nostalgia factories hard-sell agos
like Big Macs at the maquiladora
but no one bats down us murciélagos!
Let’s swarm vanilla streets till glam Gomorrah!
 

Running out of rhymes ending in -ora
and going batty from a lack of bats,
I map the spirit’s wordless habitats,
free-riffing, like Williams on his kora
(son of a fierce Boricua señora
as am I, one of many Rican brats
all born too late to be bugalú cats,
watch Clemente bat or Julia score a
run-on line.) My broomstick bat will shatter
(that Klemente rode a wooden stallion).
I’ll invoke the island’s antimatter,
the hemisphere’s populist battalion
that claims its peace, beautiful rebellion
of bat-shit particles born to scatter.

 

 

When something like this breaks, it means 

we must swarm around the narrow 

stairway, our steps slower, the pace 

set according to our sighs. Each

glance and gesture becomes a word.

My looking down and waiting speaks 

to the old woman next to me: 

after you. All the stars left in 

the sky, all the calls and blinking

messages, the wintered sorrow 

of all passing thoughts must now wait 

until we are level again – 

wait as we take turns returning 

to our lives. When something like this 

breaks, it means the words I wanted 

to write before are different from 

the ones I have got down for you. 

These words are older than you think.

 

 —José Angel Araguz from his book Until We Are Level Again.
 

Toward the end of each winter

the river turns broken blue,

a blue with all blues inside:

the blue of eyes, a star-like blue,

            the blue of veins and bruises.

 

The color of holding still, that blue,

a gradual hardening that gives

a little more each day I walk

speaking to my dead father and see

            the questions he can’t ask –

 

 

Questions grow, and in blue writing

blue lines tense as though the words

would rewrite themselves to answer

in blues broken with each season

            coursing inside me.

 

 

—José Angel Araguz from his book Until We Are Level Again.
 

 

Last Rites

 Were I ten years old again 

I would have no problem

drawing from memory the words

that made my mother’s house 

feel bigger in the dark:
 
 

the bedroom window wider;
 the night quieter in its audience;

my tongue passing over
 Spanish it has since mistrusted.
 Then I would have cared more

 

to say what was expected,

would not have paused at

my hand would not have trembled
 as it followed through

 

with the sign of the cross,

a motion I repeat shakily now

over a dead bird on the sidewalk.

I hurry and hope no one sees me,

already in another silence

 

describing the bird’s still head as:

drawing from memory the words,

my tongue passing over

a motion I repeat shakily now.

 

Unknown artist, taken from George Sandamen