This is a book about a young man who
was deposited on the doorstep when he was three days old.
And I wanted to see what would happen,
what influences he would have, White, Indian, Mexicano,
Chicano, what would happen to a young child in New Mexico?
And I'm going to go through a couple of passages, OK.
This is section 5 of Martin, number 19.
He's living on the streets.
And then this is what he says, "Years pass,
cattle cars in the downtown freight yard
squeal and groan, and sizzle and grills,
steam the Barillas Coffee House cafe windows.
As the railroad workers with tin hardhats
stopped for coffee, hours of dawn,
softly click on grandfather's gold pocket watches
and Louise Broadway Pawn shop hawked
to get a cousin or brother out of jail.
City workers, 10 carts, and long handle dust
pans clatter and curb gutters as buses spew
smoldering exhaust, as they in any Walgreens' neon liquor
sign.
I lean against an office building brick wall, nothing
to do, nowhere to go.
Comb my hair in the blue tinted office windows,
see my reflection in the glinting Chrome
cars on a corner, beneath the smoke and red traffic light.
I live.
Blue beanie cap snug over my ears down to my brow,
and white bottomed jean pants trimmed with red braid,
I start my daily walk to the Old Town Post Office.
Condemned Armijo School building, Rio Grande Playa,
ditches and underpasses a detribalized Apache.
Entangled in the rusty barbed wire of a society
I do not understand.
Mexicano blood in me spattering like
run off water from a root canal.
Glistening over the lives who lived before me, like rain
over mounds of broken pottery, each day
back fills with brown dirt of my dreams.
I lived in the streets, slept at friends' houses, spoon pozole,
and wiped up the last frijoles con tortilla from my plate.
Each day, my hands hurt for something to have,
and a voice in me yearn to sing, and my body
wanted to shed the gray skin of streets
like a snake that grew wings.
I wished I had a chance to be a little boy,
and wished a girl had loved me, and wished I had had a family.
But these were silver inlaid pieces
of another man's life, whose destiny
found turned over stones and Ivy of the courtyard in a fairy
tale somewhere.
Each night, I could hear the silver whittling blade
of La Llorona, carving a small child on the Muddy River
bottom, like a little angel carved into ancient church
doors.
On Fridays, Jesus Christ appeared on La Vega road.
Mounted on a white charger, his black robe
flapping in the moonlight as he thrashed through bosque brush.
Sometimes, Wallei, the voice of water sang to me, and Mectallá,
who lives in the fire, flew in the air.
And Cuzal, the reader of rocks, spoke with a voice jagged it
as my street fight knuckles.
A voice in me, soft as linen, unfolded on midnight air
to wipe my loneliness away.
The voice blew open like a white handkerchief
in the night, embroidered with red roses,
waving and waving from a dark window
that some lover who never returned.
I became a friend of the old women who hung out by the bars
on Central Broadway, Isleta and Barcelona.
Blue teardrops tattooed on their cheeks, initials of ex-lovers
on their hands, women drawn out from the dark piste,
thinking rooms they lived in.
By the powerful force of the moon, whose yellow teeth tore,
the alfalfa out of their hearts.
And left them stubble, parched grounds, old goats
of the katos and winos nibbled.
All my life, the constant sound of someone's boot heels
trailed behind me.
Thin, hard, sharp sounds, scraping frozen ground
like a shovel digging a grave.
It's my guardian, following me through the broken branches
of the bosque to the door, as a Good Shepherd home on South
Second Street for a hot meal.