Salvador

So Perfect in All Ways

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=765SbIGneFo
(the bastards won't let me embed it; copy, paste and enjoy.)

Salvador with eyes the color of caterpillar, Salvador of the crooked hair and crooked teeth, Salvador whose name the teacher cannot remember, is a boy who is no one’s friend, runs along somewhere in that vague direction where homes are the color of bad weather, lives behind a raw wood doorway, shakes the sleepy brothers awake, ties their shoes, combs their hair with water, feeds them milk and cornflakes from a tin cup in the dim dark of the morning.

Salvador, late or early, sooner or later arrives with the string of younger brothers ready. Helps his mama, who is busy with the business of the baby. Tugs the arms of Cecilio, Arturito, makes them hurry, because today, like yesterday, Arturito has dropped the cigar box of crayons, has let go the hundred little fingers of red, green, yellow, blue, and nub of black sticks that tumble and spill over and beyond the asphalt puddles until the crossing-guard lady holds back the blur of traffic for Salvador to collect them again.

Salvador inside that wrinkled shirt, inside the throat that must clear itself and apologize each time it speaks, inside that forty-pound body of boy with its geography of scars, its history of hurt, limbs stuffed with feathers and rags, in what part of the eyes, in what part of the heart, in that cage of the chest where something throbs with both fists and knows only what Salvador knows, inside that body too small to contain the hundred balloons of happiness, the single guitar of grief, is a boy like any other disappearing out the door, beside the schoolyard gate, where he has told his brothers they must wait. Collects the hands of Cecilio and Arturito, scuttles off dodging the many schoolyard colors, the elbows and wrists crisscrossing, the several shoes running. Grows small and smaller to the eye, dissolves into the bright horizon, flutters in the air before disappearing like a memory of kites.

Prose: Sandra Cisneros, from "Woman Hollering Creek"
Video: Spike Lee, "Crooklyn"

Ghostface Killah on Art

"I don't give a fuck if you don't know what I'm talking about- this is art. When you go see a painting on the wall and it looks bugged out because you don't know what the fuck he thinking, because he ain't got no benches, no trees there, it's just a splash. The nigga that did it know what the fuck it is."

-from "The Wu-Tang Manual" 2005
Ghostface Killah on art

this poem is scratch and sniff

first day off without a plan
in the sometimes
no baseball to watch either
and searching I go
to find substantial entertain
meant for mental me and
the beastly competition craving
before I get four blocks
"Can I take that for you?"
a Mailman with hair invading
his face impolitely
from the north and in rank
but this stranger in blue shorts
took my Netflix returns and made
the rest of my day a complete disappointment
who peaks before 10 a.m.
and lives to tell about it
and why haven't I read them
this poem is scratch and sniff

Poem: "This Poem is Scratch and Sniff" Robert Lescatre
Photo: Jennifer Mapes

watching dog star man / 'pressed

watching Dog Star Man

desirelessness by rule
most deem unattainable
I won't argue
because I don't desire
small gains or certainties
the desire I maintain
is that of true existence
surrendered to the cause
of making as much of
this as we can
but not for ourselves
individually
but us, we
there are mere formalities
of constructive thinking
that shield many from
reali\zing their true tangible
tenuous relationship with
each and every object
they sense solely


'pressed

a smile under blue eyes
on the constitutional course
one of a multitude missiles
whose meaning I'd prefer to
remain in self-insistant mystery
for revelations read like
new sets of rules or possibilities
while my pose ping-pong's 'tween
placid and 'plosive
or orgones gone soaring
so far from somewhere
and yet found readily
through reflections
soulward
that is to say
back and forth forever
so just smile back
splash without rocks
on each shore as if it
were an undiscovered land

Poems: "watching dog star man" "'pressed" by Robert Lescatre
Icon: "Kateri Tekakwitha: Icon of Otherness" by Robert Lentz