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