Juan Felipe Herrera

young Jesse Washington — even though you     on the wooden stick cross of fire bitten charred cut & burned        5 minute jury April 15, 1916    Waco, Texas shackled & dragged — lynched You live on Trayvon Martin face down red juice on the lawn clutching candy rushing home the hoodie the hoodie the prowler shooter said upside down shredded night because of you     you we march touch hands lean back leap forth against the melancholy face of tanks & militia    we move walk become we become           somehow Eric Garner we scribble your name sip your breath    now our breath cannot be choked off our skin cannot be flamed      totality cannot be cut off each wrist each bone cannot be chained to the abyss gnashing levers & polished killer sheets of steel we are remarkably loud not masked rough river colors that cannot be threaded back hear us Freddie Gray here                                         with us Jesse Washington Trayvon Martin Michel Brown the Black Body holy Eric Garner  all breath Holy we weep & sing as we write as we mobilize & march under the jubilant solar face

for New Orleans and the people of the Gulf Coast water water water wind water across the land shape of a torn heart new orleans waves come louisiana the waves come alabama wind calls alabama and the roofs blow across red clouds inside the divine spiral there is a voice inside the voice there is light water wind fire smoke the bodies float and rise kind flames bow down and move across the skies never seen blackish red bluish bruised water rises houses fall the child the elders the mothers underwater who will live who will rise the windows fill with the howling where is the transfusion where is the lamp who who in the wet night jagged in the oil waves come the lakes loosen their sultry shape it is the shape of a lost hand a wing broken casinos in biloxi become carnations across the sands and the woman in the wheelchair descends her last breath a rose in the razor rain uptown on mansion hill even the million dollar house bows in the negative shade someone is afloat a family dissolves the nation disappears neighborhoods fade across lost streets the police dressed in newspapers flutter toward nothingness moons who goes there under our floors filtered wooden stars towels and glass gasoline coffins the skin of trees and jalopy tires fish bebop dead from the zoo the dogs half drag ward number nine miss Symphony Spikes and mrs. Hardy Johnson the new plankton new algae of the nameless stroll in the dark ask the next question about kindness then there is a bus a taxi a hearse a helicopter a rescue team a tiny tribe of nine year olds separating the waters the oils and ashes hear the song of splinters and blood tree sap machine oil and old jazz trumpeters z's and x's raffia skirts and jujube hats and a father man holds the hand of his lover saying take care of the children let me go now let me stumble stumble nowhere drink this earth liquor going in petals stadiums and looters celebrities cameras cases more water cases again and again a new land edge emerges a new people emerges where race and class and death and life and water and tears and loss and life and death destruction and life and tears compassion and loss and a fire stolen bus rumbles toward you all directions wherever you are alive still

for Clara Fraser I do not understand why men make war. Is it because artillery is the most stoic example of what flesh can become? Is it because the military plan is the final map drawn by the wisest hunter? Is it because the neutron ray is the invincible finger no one will disobey? or Is it because the flood of blood is the proper penance workers must pay for failing tribute at the prescribed hour? I do not understand why men make war. Is it because when death is multiple and expanding, there among the odd assemblages, arbitrary and unnamed, there among the shrivelled mountains, distorted and hollow, there among the liquid farms and cities, cold and sallow, there among the splintered bones of children, women, men and cattle there and only there, the eerie head of power is being born? Is it because submission is the only gesture to be rehearsed, to be dressed, to be modeled, to be cast, to be chosen in the one and only one drama to be staged in the theater of this world, where everyone must act with the backbone humbled with the mascara of bondage, with the lipstick of slaves under the light of gentle assassination with applause piercing the ground forever? or Is it because war is the secret room of all things to be kept sealed and contained, to be conquered and renamed woman enclosed by an empire of walls, vaults, hinges and locks with the hot key that men and only men must possess for an eternal evening to visit and contemplate, to snap open a favorite window and gaze at the calibrated murder as lovers of beauty?

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 cocoons for the Nomenclature, I wanted to speak of the Glue Sniffers and Glue Smoothers who despise all forms unbound, loose in their amber nectars, I wanted to point to their noses, hoses and cables and networks, their tools, if I can use that word now—and scales and scanners and Glue Rectories. I wanted you to meet my broom mother who carved a hole into her womb so that I could live— At every sunset she stands under the shadow of the watchtowers elongating and denying her breath. I wanted to look under the rubble fields for once, for you (if you approved), flee into the bullet-riddled openness and fall flat, arched, askew, under the rubble sheets and let the rubble fill me with its sharp plates and ripped dust— alphabets incomplete and humid. You, listen, a little closer to the chalk dust—this child swinging her left arm, a ribbon, agitated by unnamed forces, devoured.

Radiante, 1967, by Olga Albizu Jestered ochre yellow my umber Rothko divisions my Brooklyns with Jerry Stern black then oranged gold leaf & tiny skulls perforations Dada sugar bread of Oaxacan ecstasy Lorca’s green horse the daffodil head corruptions of the State in tenor exhalation saxophonics blossomings rouged monkey Dalí roll down the keys the high G’s underStreets of the undeRealms my hair. Throttle up into hyper-city correlations = compassion compassion the void extends

Lissen to the whistle of night bats— oye como va, in the engines, in the Chevys & armed Impalas, the Toyota gangsta’ monsters, surf of new world colony definitions & quasars & culture prostars going blam over the Mpire, the once-Mpire, carcass neural desies for the Nothing. i amble outside the Goddess mountain. Cut across the San Joaquín Valley, Santiago de Cuba, Thailand & Yevtushenko’s stations; hunched humans snap off cotton heads gone awry & twist nuclear vine legs. Jut out to sea, once again—this slip sidewalk of impossible migrations. Poesy mad & Chicano-style undone wild. Rumble boy. Rumble girl. In wonder & amazement. On the loose. Cruisin’ shark-colored maze of presidential bombast, death enshrined archipelago fashion malls, neutered wars across the globe come barreling down on my Neo-American uzi mutations, my uppgraded 2Pac thresholds. My indigo streets, i say with disgust & erotic spit, Amerikaner frontier consciousness gone up long ago. Meet my barriohood, meet me with the froth i pick up everyday & everyday i wipe away with ablution & apologia & a smirk, then a smile on my Cholo-Millennium liberation jacket. No motha’, no fatha’, no sista’, no brotha’. Just us in the genetic ticktock culture chain, this adinfinitum, clueless Americana grid of inverted serapes, hallucinations of a nation, streets in racist Terminator coagulation. Get loose after the day-glo artery of a fix. Power outages propel us into cosmos definition, another forty-million-New-Dollar-Plantation Basilica, or is it tender chaos? My upside-down Kahlúa gallon oración drool blackish metal flake desires, the ooze of Dulcinea— Tepeyac stripper, honey from Tara’s open green fans. Tara? Tara, where are you? Tara of the blessings & weapons against illusion. Against administrator pig, against molester snake, against rooster corporate lust. Remember me? i am the black-red blood spark worker, Juana Buffalo’s illegitimate flight usher, back up from Inframundo. Quick ooze again, this formless city space i live in— my circular false malaria. Fungi Town says everything’s awright without your Holy Wheel, your flaming tree wombs, this sista’ bundle i ache for, the one i lost in a fast brawl for redemption at the gates of this Creation Mulatto Hotel, this body passage, this wonder fire from the chest. i stand alone on Mass Man Boulevard. Look east, look south. Bleary sirens come howling with vats of genocide & grey prison gang buses jam with my true brotha’ wetbacks. Pick another bale of tropical grape, another bushel of pesticide & plutonium artichoke. Cancer tomatoes the biggest in the world. Bastard word,bracero produce, alien culture— power & slime. Crawl up my back, heavy loaded on cheap narratives, Salinas doubles, Atlantis sketched on Gorbachev’s forehead: you, yes, you, gator-mouthed agent—like gila progeny. Let’s hustle. Let’s trade. It is 1:27 A.M. in da rat Arctic. What do i trade passion for? Language escapes me. Passion is smoke. i dissolve. It is in my nature to disappear. No sista’, no brotha’. No motha’, no soul. This shred iciness is all, a crazy register that destroys itself into Polaroid, into a glacial sheet of multicolored border walls. Let’s foam & spin flamey bluish tears for the Thing-Against-Itself, soul-less soul, this film word surface. Sing out, baby. Wobble & bop to town. Drag yo’ hands across my fine-tuned work train named Desastre en route to Freetown—engineered African shaman houses smell of licorice, Ebola & famine blood, of hair torn, of death owls & cancerous alcoholic livers, of babies sucking this deep night to come, then—a busted chink of afternoon copper light wakes us, yo’ sista’ rolls in with a bag of lemons for Evil Eye, for the seven-inch ache in her abdomen. Keep me in stride. You. i am talking to you, fool. Don’t just sit there stretchin’ yo’ face. Tell me why fire yearns for the heart. Write it down. Say it. Fool. Speak the names. Conjure the recitations from the coffee cup, the steel-toe, border-crosser boots. The grass rips up the morning snow lights, jagged & yellowish. My AIDS face is hidden. Your rot, my epistemology. i stand in pure light, a blaze of eyes & arms, volcanic & solar, autistic, anti-written, burned by mad friars & clerics, uptown octopi readers, my long hair falls as reddish honey, on a naked supple back, on breasts small & secretive. Mystery evades me. Shadows crumble. Without attention i locate the love void & yet, i know all is well. My blood rocks to a bolero out of rhythm, a firefly’s bolero that is, the one in the dog eye. Hear me warm up to the multi-night. Scribble poems & shout rebuke for the sake of scarred angels, for Tara, who guides me in her emeraldine, sequined night of lies. Hear me now, kin to the half-collie language that i keep & walk. Kin now, to the leaves that plunge to the floors; swivel whiteness without axis, tectonic blasts without mercy. Straitjackets float on the river infinity. Pink-skinned fishes stare back as they evolve into my shape, my babble stream magnetic juan-foolery. Arm wrestle me on the soccer lawn, kick me in the balls. The murder music is for everyone. The Last Mayan Acid rock band plays Berlin’s latest score: dead trade market systems for the dead proletariats, rip up from Bangkok to Tenejapa. Everyone is meaningful & vomits, everyone deposits a stench pail, into the Cube— Neo-America, without the fissure of intimate thighs. Cross over into fire, hunger & spirit. i write on my hand: the road cuts into a star. Go, now, go, fool. In your lyric wetback saxophone, the one yo’ mama left you, the Thing-Against-Itself strapped across your hips. Do not expect me to name—this Thing-Against-Itself. Play it. Screw it. Howl up to the Void, the great emptiness, the original form. Night Journal: Keep on rockin’, blues fish, the gauze of hte day into night. Out there somewhere, Dis-America, pick up a chrome bone, the shards of the last Xmas Presidential extravaganza. You, of course, fool. Swivel into the clear. Float over the greenish migrant barracks pocked with wire torsos, toes wiggle & predict our forthcoming delirium—there is a velvet panther shouting out OM in funk, there is a tawny word in the middle of the city thoroughfare, a planetary semi of lives slices the wet animal in half. i am that punk half panther. My fierce skull & mandible, formidable, my pelt is exact as witch quartz, a slashed leg tumbles down the highway, battered by every dirty, steel wheel. Face up to the sky, you, i said, to the brilliant gossip from the Goddess parade. Outside, outside. So. Crawl up, baby, come on, keep on floatin’— sliding’, always: for black journeys, always in holiness. From Border-Crosser With a Lamborghini Dream,1999.

—in memory ofCynthia Hurd, Susie Jackson, Ethel Lance,Rev. Depayne Middleton-Doctor,Hon. Rev. Clementa Pinckney,Tywanza Sanders, Rev. Daniel Simmons Sr.,Rev. Sharonda Singleton, Myra ThompsonShot and killed while at church.Charleston, SC (6-18-2015), RIP poem by        poem we can end the violence every day                        after every other day 9 killed in Charleston, South Carolina they are not 9 they are each one alive we do not know you have a poem to offer it is made of action—you must search for it     run outside and give your life to it when you find it    walk it back—blow upon it carry it taller than the city where you live when the blood comes down do not ask          if it is your blood   it is made of 9             drops honor them wash them stop them from falling

For Francisco X. Alarcón, RIP It considers those men that ambled & Flushed their swords & cut off the neck Of the blue horses & scraped off death Dust from the carcass — rape of women Tresses in boilers — the tin-colored animals On the viridian grasses in particular the Howler Monkey let the word shoot up To the spheres — later we charged our Blood with these accounts we hid the arms Unforgiving texts & designs sewn into Our tiny alabaster lockets. We visited The last ridge where Victor Jara Denounced the paramilitary — from La Obrera in the heights of  Tijuana we Sketched the reddish moon & scratched Poems those things that could carry The letters we hauled on our backs. We were separated from something we Could not describe yet we were in The totality in the long winding turquoise That broke us & put us back together Again. What was that totality? It could Not be written —Green moon, green blood— We wrote. We marched to the ends of Lacanjá Chansayab & the heights Of El Colorín Central México. We were too Late — the waters in which people bathed Were cloudy & malignant — bellies Bloated children leaned on the twig House women stood up some sat cross- Legged under the fire rays of noon — We knew they knew the rubble land Was not theirs or ours it was stuffed into The cigarette packs of the Ladino Hacendados who kicked up their short Boots in the City of Bones below. With our faces in new faces we rolled Back to LA. Do you change it? Do you Leave it the same? Words — what are they? A new cognition was required — then With the ecstasy of the unleashed Other things pulled us apart. Other things Reassembled us. Now we are here.

Let us gather in a flourishing way with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos que cargamos cada día en el young pasto nuestro cuerpo para regalar y dar feliz perlas pearls of corn flowing árboles de vida en las cuatro esquinas let us gather in a flourishing way contentos llenos de fuerza to vida giving nacimientos to fragrant ríos dulces frescos verdes turquoise strong carne de nuestros hijos rainbows let us gather in a flourishing way en la luz y en la carne of our heart to toil tranquilos in fields of blossoms juntos to stretch los brazos tranquilos with the rain en la mañana temprana estrella on our forehead cielo de calor and wisdom to meet us where we toil siempre in the garden of our struggle and joy let us offer our hearts a saludar our águila rising freedom a celebrar woven brazos branches ramas piedras nopales plumas piercing bursting figs and aguacates ripe mariposa fields and mares claros of our face to breathe todos en el camino blessing seeds to give to grow maiztlán en las manos de nuestro amor

for Charles Fishman Before you go further, let me tell you what a poem brings, first, you must know the secret, there is no poem to speak of, it is a way to attain a life without boundaries, yes, it is that easy, a poem, imagine me telling you this, instead of going day by day against the razors, well, the judgments, all the tick-tock bronze, a leather jacket sizing you up, the fashion mall, for example, from the outside you think you are being entertained, when you enter, things change, you get caught by surprise, your mouth goes sour, you get thirsty, your legs grow cold standing still in the middle of a storm, a poem, of course, is always open for business too, except, as you can see, it isn’t exactly business that pulls your spirit into the alarming waters, there you can bathe, you can play, you can even join in on the gossip—the mist, that is, the mist becomes central to your existence.