No Poem Is the Only Poem. No Story Is the Only Story.
Seconds tick by. Downtown LA this time of morning is almost but not quite still. Beginning to wake up. I’m aware of my breath, the rustles, mumbling, cursing going on down the sidewalk. The stink of things I can’t identify. “You ever come to get soup?”
When I am on coffee number four. I have my father’s mouth whistle through brown slits. I liked his smile most when he was around mamí, his sisters.
At a point in my early poetic development, I stumbled across the legendary work of Karen Finley’s "Shock Treatment"' When I tell you I tore through that book, know it’s not an understatement. Finley perfectly captured my angst and aggression, helping me move my aggression from petty, teenage heartbreak to using my grief and anger as catalysts to shift real-world thinking on race and sexuality.