Angel & Hannah

a foal, a light I can barely
contain…I feel…rapturous?
Water breaking through a vase. Chaos ~ a dancing star in me!
My belly, housing hot energy
sparked by sunsets, sad eyes, kisses…a living
thing made by Love. How miraculous? I veer
away from cars, smog, stop in to a fancy-lit
café on Tenth Street, craving
fresh lemon slices.
I wanna guard myself from city ~ evils — my body is wiser than me.
Young lioness, ready to rip apart
any beast. Is this what it feels like? Aigu, uma, is this how you glowed?
Was this private motherlove enough? This quiet-body bliss?
Tell me. What should I do? I bite my lip, soak blood in my napkin.

Job Hunt
Forty-second Street. Home of the hand-pocket-hustle,
always a help-wanted sign strung on a smudged glass window.
Angel enters the low-roofed BBQ joint, Hannah in
tow behind, into a cigar-stained musk. Lamps frayed
with red tassels. He asks for an application; fills
it out at the bar table. A blank
look on his face. He fills in spaces slow as dust; she flanks
his side, hisses correct spellings. One waitress trips. She
spills her mug of dark ale watching them cheat,
fidget, stall. His right hand stutters d’s into b’s.
Hannah hisses, Stupid.
In ten minutes, Angel rips up his splotched paper. Exits.
She trails behind, wordless. They hail a taxi.
Inside, she sobs, loud. He cries, soundless.


Hunger
he’s so hungry he can’t even think
a bag of chips for breakfast and only if he’s lucky
angie will fix him
a plate of leftover pernil but it’s chips
pizza most days plus a few sniffs
of that good old yeyo tired n broke
wired n broke drinking coke
sniffin coke he’s sick of it ready to quit but shit
one day a week is not enough cuz
by monday he’s down to quarter waters
from jaquelina’s so angel dreams
of barbecued baby back ribs ordered at charlies
or a rough slab of twelve-oz steak
tender not tough


Uma (Hannah)
I’m curled in bed, clutching a pillow,
stomach rippling. Nothing in the fridge
’cept peanut butter & beer. All of a sudden,
hunger collapses me.
Wanna week at home, uma’s galbi chim,
seven plates of banchan, spinach, meluchi,
kimchee, kochujang, cucumbers, salmon head,
talking to her barefoot in the kitchen
while the fan chops smoke into ribbons,
or after, when I’m full, oily, bloated,
when I nest my palms over my gut & lull.
Rest like a hammock swing
under fading light before apa
comes home wheezing curses,
before afternoon sours like old kimchee.
Oh uma, I miss you uma-ing me.


Beni
Hannah yells at Angel
in front of Sady’s brownstone
steps. They’re shaded by maples,
but her voice carries. Beni
walks towards them, she clams up.
Ice flows in her veins.
Yo, what’s the problem? he drawls.
I hear your mouth two blocks
away, up Harman.
It’s him, she spits,
hands attacking air,
but Beni warns, Chill, chill.
Angel’s a man, not a kid,
ma. Watch how you talk to him.


Apa
Watch how you talk to him ~
Beni’s words ring in her
hours later like a morning alarm ~
didn’t she hiss the same thing
once to her father? Watch
how you talk to my uma, each word
a dagger…she brushes her teeth, enveloped
in quiet. Angel sidesteps as she enters the bedroom,
filling it with her buzz.
After all those years,
she thinks,
I’m becoming Him.
She sits alone, half-in-shadow,
half-in-stark-light.


Cocaine
He’s on it bad again.
It darkens the petals
under his eyes. All luminous metals
mined from his skin.
He fails her ET test —
fingertip to fingertip,
she can tell when he’s high
cuz his blood throbs into hers
like trainwreck — one hot, wired mess.
Motherfucker! she spits.
What the fuck. She hurls a shot glass
across the linoleum. It splinters into bits.
At night, she sleeps with her back
to his bottle-hard
dick. Both of them
ground to shards.


Survive
She hears stories. Sometimes, her sweet Angel
is not an angel, when his boys circle up
to share tales of bravado, of wilding out
on the trains ~ she stays on the fringes
of conversation, hears scraps of details
that make her arm hairs rise — He’s a fighter,
Googie says. When I got jumped by those
Nietas, only Angel came to my side —
It was eight to two, but he rammed that sucka
with a screwdriver in his side, knocked
another one’s front tooth out — ooh,
flaco’s no joke, they laugh. She cringes
to hear such brutality, she doesn’t like
what it takes to survive in the streets,
Why? Why do you do that shit? she asks.
I do what I gotta do to survive, he says simply.


Godless
Because of one mistake —
no food for breakfast, the girl forgot to say —
she must stay awake while they
suck, scrape the baby.
Small walnut. Hardens, turns
her back on the world. Nurses
her hole. Black canyon. No one tell her
shit. Don’t speak. Leave. Over-
head lights green, pallid.
Emptied of godlight. Girl blight.
Nothing divine. But one nurse sops
sweat from her forehead, stands by
the iron bed.
Grips tight her hand.


Outside, they shake signs at her —
half-formed fetuses, spilt. Curdled.
An urge to murder them.
Bash feathered hair on concrete. Tell
them what she knows —
No one wins, ever.
The sky gray, indifferent.
Taxicabs roam;
stray mongrels.
She hails one down,
climbs into its rancid mouth.
Rolls down window.
Watches buildings blur.
Nothing moves inside her.
God, I wanted to live so
hard. To feel my body race.
Bleed. Fly. Instead, I kill the
best things inside me. Why,
God? And what curse awaits
when I’m twenty-five, thirty? What
scarred, dry belly…my
future, a curled leaf…
I’m scared. Nowhere to turn
but inside. Smaller. Smaller.
Trying not to burn anyone else
with my dumb, hot touch.
God, why won’t Angel turn
gold? Why ash?


Nas
Nobody knows we exist,
she whispers in the dark.
Your kind, my kind. They think you live to
steal cars, I live to sell beer & cigarettes.
Hannah feels liquid,
as if she might evaporate if she doesn’t cling
to Angel’s luminous ribs.
So? Who cares? he says,
stroking her messy hair.
I care. I care.
She pouts. He sighs & sings a Nas lyric —
like a blue smoke ~ ring, it halos the air.
Whose world is this? The world is yours…
He turns to sleep. She eyes the darkness.


Paradise (Angel)
It’s no use.
Never good enough.
Never smart enough.
No matter what I do.
She’ll never keep a baby of mine —
all