Corona, Queens, New York, New York

There are six barbershops (and gold traders and bodegas and laundromats) in a 10 minute walk. These trades and services are seemingly flourishing, at least along Junction Blvd. The recession did not affect them because everyone needs a clean cut, Downy clothes, a 1a.m. fix of coconut milk, or cash from World War II brooches.

The streets have never not smelled like la basura and pigeon piss.

Contemporary Mexicana pulses from loudspeakers outside of record shops that also sell shoes.

Under techniwarmcolor fabric umbrellas, glass-plastic boxes of fruits (from sweet sun mangos to succulent flamingo watermelon) and corn-on-the-cob-on-a-stick are sold. Thick-spread butter and snowy paprika for savory flavor to grit the sweet crunch of maiz amarillo. Even in these months when we know what "wind chill" means, these umbrellas offer the reminiscence of summer temperatures atop Mayan mountains, lush and green.

Cheekless pantyhose over shameless mannequin budonkadonks and spouseless shoes shrinkwrapped in plastic.

Some random crazy dude yelling craziness in Spanish at the top of his lungs all the fucking time. The same phrase over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. Something about buying cell phones....

Dudes two feet shorter than me handing out cards with beautiful black haired women displaying their curves and the opportunity to talk to them for only $8.00 a minute.

Fifteen hours a day and night of car alarms going off with no one sprinting to be called humanitarians and an ice cream truck with a clap clap clap manifesto rhapsody.

Trash of La Dentista Handbills, Restaurant Sewage, and McDonald's bags line the tiles and curbs and pocks of this urban ground, this gum-tarred and Graffiti pretty streetside. I can't tell you how many infants' socks and shoes, without their significant others, have been been abandoned and left to dampen and spoil in the streets of Corona.

"Jaded Princess"

I should have heeded his warning and kept my

distance.

You first were expecting corruption underneath silks and beads.
But after the kindness and obedience, loyalty turned too much,

too soon.

Perturbation reigned shortly thereafter until I selfishly took
it from you, took you, tucked in you, fucked in you, fucked you,

And then returned.

Rough and tumble lust didn't host your oohish afterparties, so I'm
sorry I didn't show and didn't want to show after saying I'd come,

and then returned.

Time in scarves and streets playing sweetness, but I'm a notknown.
And you were too, so I thanked you for your honesty not a moment

too soon.

And I reserved the right after the months' deceit to call you
a cunt and instruct you to maintain what was the most civil

distance.

"She's a big bowl of crazy" sounded appetizing initially.

epilogue

You keep saying you won't
___keep me waiting,

and I kept believing you
for the sake of finding

the gentlest kiss and
the hardest fuck and

writing them into a
featherlight sonnet with

your cunt for the epigraph.

The Journalist (Denouement)

Pools and Greens dropped to
pools of leaves hazeling after her

'Ineverwanttoseeyouagain' schtick and
kitsch and my 'we'llsee' promptly thereafter.

Months passed. Our New York autumned
a gentle adieu until her tacit disregard

for me bled into scissors snipping ribbons:
"Hey. I dreamt about you," she began again;

They were words suspended from an identity
since I'd suspended her from my mind.

"You apologized." And I would come to
apologize and whisper to her again.

But not without distortions, up and down
(spikes in) brows and lips, voices and hands.

Not without trekking Manhattans of
songlessness and abrasive diction.

Not without a night of kissing for seconds and
sleeping sexless until glowing curtains woke us.

For too long we had faith in our turbulence,
that dissonant musicality. Our silent smirks.

And after calling me "sweet" and "rude" while
thinking her a cunt and nun in two week's time,

I realized we can't make this music. We're better
off turning off the mic and going home.

Teaching Seventh Graders Poetry

Fuck the margin, kids.

Summer

I love this weather,
the objectification of those glaring smoothnesses,
those curves bare in the sunlight,
_______________the rippling,
________________________ jiggling,

voluptuousness _________of their bends.

We call them tits and ass,
we call them breasts and buttocks,
and though I know
_____________-I do, _______I know-
that women are persons too,
goddamnit, sometimes they don't wear their humanity.