Self-Portrait as Candidate Statement
I
I have years of experience
looking like a extra for On My Block,
of putting on a pinche suit
& wearing Cortezes under the table,
of hearing those last three words
spoken only in Spanish
by a race of men
called my uncles
who’d throw cobija ‘tras cobija
on our garage floor
& call it a cama.
Hallowed be their chests
of refried beans & flea market blankets.
Luis, Sergio, Felipe,
who’d end every sentence with the phrase,
Si Dios me da licencia,
which is Spanish for I hail
from a gente who laugh
more than they live.
II
I was born
inside the toothless mouth
of a VHS player,
watching Spy Kids 2
on a baby TV
mounted Simba style
inside a Little Caesar’s,
the K-Mart carts skirted around us,
scoffing at how loud we were
as Ama over the phone fed
the Kaiser lady our insurance,
& saved the world
by getting me glasses.
A moment ago, I lazy eyed her
wolfing down the medical mumbo
like a Saturday caricatura
at the waiting room,
sandwiching syllable & her signature
on the busted clipboard
handing over our flimsy ID’s
to this lady with the whitest teeth
who spoke to us in the clicks of her keyboard
behind the counter, its glass
as thick as the one at the liquor store
down our pad.
O the marvel of Amá
as she shapeshifted into an accordion,
her stomach stretching & stretching
to sing. To survive, mi’jo,
we must take on many forms.
IX
Coming from East Palo Alto,
I was raised by a first-generation
nursery of boys who bloomed
from tanbark, learned since saplings
to petal dirt at each other,
to grab fistfuls of fuck you’s
& la tuya güey’s, & throw it
at every exposed part
‘cuz maybe that’s how you grew
here, in the heart of barkness
where it winters in broad gold
& yet the streets are cold,
where the redwoods & palo altos,
are as tall as tech moguls,
and by their very stature & husk,
fix our face to the forest floor,
casting it in a permanent dusk,
leaving victor & vianey’s alike
to vie for what’s left
of the rich sunlight. As we climb
or at least attempt,
articles abound, editorializing
our ascent, an assembly
of Attenborough’s who narrate
our strange planet,
These youngsters search
for some kind of ladder
by lashing around
with their whiplike tendrils.
A raised hand,
whole limbs shot up
from a tagged desk,
a skin of thorns
to hide suspensions,
county as my witness
we spent half our lifespan
pulling each other down,
and the other
doubting our brothers to the ground,
say to ourselves maybe that’s why
the planters left us, graded our roots
as too gnarly & brown
vines unable to be fed,
after all, over a billion has poured
by Google, Microsoft, and IBM,
board rooms of silk shoulders shrugged,
we can’t get you to stem.
We’re sentenced to stay
in the shadow of the valley,
and call it synthesis, a true exchange
of energy, to save our mothers’ spot in line
for the dozens of hunger programs.
Is this the dream Dad wanted? To see
by the window the second harvest
trucks lined up at the Boys & Girls Club.
I watch him, worried
that he grabs a school’s worth of string beans
more out of condition than want.
