I'd like to read a few poems from section 2 as well.
Excuse me for looking at my watch,
I'm just mindful of not running over into my new friends'
reading time as well.
But I want to read a poem called "Club Las Palmas."
And the reason I want to read this particular poem
is because the kernel of this poem I wrote while I was here
at the University of Arizona.
"Club Las Palmas."
"Open vats of red vinegar fermented outside--
108 degrees of Del Sol heat and black asphalt.
Guillermo and I choked on the vinegar's vapor as we
threw cardboard boxes, still ripe with scraps of guts,
into the dumpster.
Pig blood poured from the boxes, ran under my smock
and down my skin.
'This is no way to live,' I told Guillermo.
Guillermo dipped his hand into a box lined
with wax, used his hand like a wooden ladle,
filled his palm with warm blood, and he held it very still
as if blood might reveal lost memory or a life that he
had yet to live.
At noon, we ate lunch.
Flies, maddened by raw meat, stuck to our skin
and dizzied the air, but I still heard,
splitting industrial Del Sol, the freeway where
I wanted to be.
I wanted an age too young to remember,
when fog settled across the Valley
and my grandfather, who drove trucks for Ringsby Rocket,
passed by on the 99 and took the Jensen off-ramp
to check in his emptied rig.
At home, he put his soft-bristled wooden brush
beside the towel smelling of shower and shave,
and he sat to eat nopales and chicken my grandmother
sweetened with red chili sauce.
He slipped into the black silk-lined coat of his best
black suit, and opened the black case of his trumpet,
and after each valve was oiled, and
after the floral-carved bell was polished,
we drove to Club Las Palmas, and Abraham's Latin Combo
began to tune.
At Galdini Sausage, lunch was over.
Guillermo fixed his collar with dignity,
and he undid his belt and his pants with dignity,
and he pulled out his shirt, and he
pointed at the rope-thick purple scar
sagging hip to hip below his belly
where he once cut himself open to let out
the life he did not want.
'It is better to work,' he said, and tucked in his shirt.
Have you seen a man give himself to this place?
Guillermo and I started a palette of Sweet.
We ground shoulder and cartons of fat.
We added molasses, sugar, and anise,
then sank in beyond knuckle and elbow,
and pushed it all through."