Writers--Joe

Jose Olivares worked as a secondary mathematics teacher, middle school principal , Corpus Christi Independent School District mathematics consultant, and as adjunct professor of mathematics at Texas A&M CC. He occasionally finds time to write about working as a migrant laborer as a child.

Please Close the Windows

“Please close the windows, the air is burning my face” my younger sister cried as we drove to California seeking work as migrant workers. My parents had loaded the family (five children ages 17, 15, 13, 10, 4) into the car and headed cross country to the Bakersfield area. Two older siblings did not join us—one was married and the other was serving in the U.S. Army. I was 15.

Our car did not have air conditioning, but the desert air blowing into the car was so hot that we alternated closing and opening the windows. My Mother would constantly place a wet towel over my Father’s head and shoulder in order to cool his body.

We worked picking grapes, peaches, potatoes and tomatoes. Our home was in one of the many labor camps in the area. Our shelter was a metal structure that felt like a furnace in the hot summer days. Our shelter had no electricity, running water or bathroom facilities. Group facilities were available for our use.

Children worked alongside their families and contributed in the daily pickings. We generally worked eight to ten hours each day.

My brother taught me to drive a car that summer. It was a Chevy with a standard shift. One of my greatest pleasures that summer was driving to a corner store on Fridays and drinking a quart of chocolate milk without having to share with my siblings. “When I grow up, I will buy all the chocolate milk I want,” I would tell my brother.

That was the summer of 1962. César Chávez and the United Farmworkers Union that sought to improve working and living conditions for migrant workers would come years later.

Levántate Mi Hijo

--José, levántate mi hijo, ya son las seis-- my Mother said as she woke me up. I waited for her to leave and then started crying silently. I was about 12 years old.

My nightly dreams included episodes of picking cotton. I picked cotton during the day and then I picked cotton during my sleep. I remember being exhausted in the mornings, but I gave myself the privilege of crying only once. I did not tell anyone. I felt I could not take a day off.

We generally worked ten to twelve hours a day in the cotton fields of South Texas. I always felt it was my job to pick cotton, as much as I could, every day. Most of our family worked in the cotton fields during the summers.

Each week my parents would give me about one dollar to spend and our earnings were used to provide for our family. I could count on a new shirt, pants, and sometimes shoes for the start of the new school year. I worked in the cotton fields from grade school through my sophomore year in high school.

Joseph Huerta lives in Corpus Christi, having completed King High School, the University of Texas, and UT Law School. "Living as an author has been a way of seeing life both as a writer and as a reader; it is a way of correlating different books and a way to go forward."

Excerpt from LA ROJA

The priest has a new task before him, a task given him by the bishop: He will meet an altar server at Pepe’s, a restaurant chosen by the server. It is a Mexican restaurant where you can buy ten TACOS ONLY $12.99— BEEF, CHICKEN & PORK. CARRY-OUT ONLY. And Pepe’s is OPEN 7A-10P.

“Pepe’s,” the priest mutters to himself, walking up to the restaurant door.

Most altar servers go to high school, belong to the Boy Scouts, and just play football. They might have a car that got decorated by white shoe polish on the windows, or perhaps their homes were decorated by toilet paper.

Except for this particular altar server—Esteban.

Sometimes witnesses to religious cults and murders might be teenagers, particularly with regard to the existence of a folk saint from Mexico named Santa Muerte. Sometimes, your witnesses are not all deacons or monks or primates.

Sometimes they are altar servers.

“Hello, Father,” the teenager says.

He is a wisp of a boy dressed in a white T-shirt covered by an Army jacket.

His jeans dribble down from his waistband. He rubs his nose.

“Are you Esteban? Hi, Esteban,” the priest says. “It is good to see you. I am Father Willy.”

The boy’s father is with him. “I am Esteban’s dad—Mr. Salazar. How are you?”

Esteban’s father looks a bit like the Mexican TV host Don Francisco of Sabado Gigante, but today, he needs a shave, and his cotton sports coat needs pressing.

“I’m good, Mr. Salazar.”

He laughs. “I wasn’t sure if you would be able to find this place.”

“I took a bus that stopped a few blocks away. Then I got lost, but a woman helped me find this place.”

“Que bueno,” says Mr. Salazar with a laugh.

“Seguro.”

“I guess you want to eat here with Esteban. I’ll be in the hardware store next door.” He hands the priest a card. “I put my number on the back. Call me if there’s any problem.”

“Can I go to the men’s room?” Esteban asks.

“Be my guest,” Father Willy says.

Esteban skips off to the men’s room.

“Take care, Father Guillermo,” Mr. Salazar says, turning toward the door.

“See you in an hour.”

Father Willy looks at a nearby booth and sits there. The servers scuttle around another section of the restaurant, so he places his briefcase onto the table and opens it. There is a folder inside devoted to Esteban and to his story. Father Willy opens the folder, turning to past photographs, church records, and his own typewritten notes. Father Willy also pulls out a letter Esteban wrote. He wrote it during his English class at high school. It wasn’t turned into the teacher. It was folded up and left in a copy of Fahrenheit 451.

The English teacher read the note and decided to send it to the Church. Esteban has no idea that the letter has assumed this power or even that it is floating around out there. Sometimes, truth can be revealed in scribbled notes, even from high school students who have no clue that they are being read. Notes have a short half-life.

Dear Opal,

I desperately hope that this note makes it to you. Sometimes things are just too important to type on the net.

This is a note about love. I’m talking about Paco and Nancy.

I have heard you talk about Paco, but you do not know Nancy. There are girls out there that make you feel electrick. You feel this flow through your body, and you can do anything. Anything.

Well, I don’t really know this but I did read it in GQ magazine. That counts, right? I’m not a teenage lover-boy so I’ll have to rely on what I heard from other people. That goes for a lot of this story.

Paco and I have gone to school together since first grade. I also know him through our Church, where we spend a lot of time.

Paco has a friend named Jaime. I guess you could say that they have been best frends. They spent a lot of time in Paco’s Mustang, driving around the Valley.

A girl came into Paco’s life, and she turned it upside down. Her name was Nancy. She has red hair, which is not common in the Valley. Jaime came up with the nickname La Roja for Nancy, but it really isn’t the proper Spanish word for redhead. I liked it. La Roja.

So anyhow Nancy showed up hunting Paco.

Father Willy sees Esteban coming toward the booth, so he slides the paper under one of his books.

“Are you hungry?” Father Willy asks.

“I’m always hungry!”

“Let’s eat! What is good here?”

“Ummm…you are going to laugh at me.”

“I won’t laugh,” Father Willy says. “Not really. I might smile.”

“Okay. Don’t laugh. I like to order Froot Loops.”

“Like cereal?”

Esteban nods.

Father Willy chuckles and says, “I think I’ll have the breakfast quesadilla.”

“That wasn’t a smile,” Esteban says with a sad pre-K look on his face.

“Sorry,” Father Willy says. He gets serious. “Cereal. Hmmm. I always liked cornflakes.”

“Cornflakes? Yuk! Froot Loops is the king,” Esteban says. He shuffles the salt and pepper and the coffee sweetener to the side of the table. “Where are you from?”

“Los Angeles,” Father Willy says.

“What brings you here?”

Father Willy makes a face, raising his eyebrows up high.

“That is a good question. I got out of divinity school and was assigned to visit various parts of the country. I have worked with a few locations on their emergency response teams. I interviewed here and got hired. The local bishop had a case he wanted me to look at. So I woke up in LA three days ago—”

“Raquel!” Esteban cries.

A server in a pink shirt approaches the booth.

“Esteban!”

The girl is perhaps nineteen with a riot of bottle-blonde curls reaching halfway to her waist. She throws her hands onto her waist and looks at Esteban like a sleuth.

“You are Esteban! El rey de los Froot Loops!”

She looks at Esteban like a Cowboys cheerleader.

“Is he El Rey de Froot Loops?” Father Willy says with a smile. He holds out his hand to Raquel. “I’m Father Willy.”

Raquel shakes his hand, looking at Esteban.

“Froot Loops?”

“¡Eso!”

“And you, Father?”

“Breakfast quesadilla.”

Raquel nods. “To drink?”

“Coffee.”

Esteban holds out his fist to bump hers. They say “seeya” like a duo off the radio.

“So you are the king of Froot Loops here,” Father Willy says.

Esteban looks at him like a science project.

“What are we going to talk about?”

Father Willy is a bit surprised. “Well, I am in the service of the local bishop.”

Esteban smiles. “You want to talk about Nancy. And Paco.”

“How did you know?”

Esteban shrugs. “This is a story about love in the shadow of the Church. Paco was supposed to go into the seminary. Then there were stories about her—her—beliefs.”

Father Willy looks at Esteban.

“Tell me about Nancy and Paco.”

Esteban looks up in the air like he is seeing angels who are feeding him his lines.

“The two of them were like a novela in high school in McAllen. They went out. They had this relationship. They loved each other.” Esteban pauses. He opens his mouth and pauses again. “Then Nancy was killed. And Paco…left.”

A random thought occurs to Father Willy: Esteban looks a bit like a stigmatic—a person bearing the crucifixion wounds of Christ, which are called stigmata. Father Willy shakes his head to make that thought go away. He has never seen a stigmatic or any divine mark of the Lord. There is no sense in introducing this idea into this case.

“Did you know Nancy and Paco?”

“Yes, I knew Paco a bit better.”

“What were they like?”

“They were in love,” Esteban says, “but then religion raised its head. Was it religion? Maybe it was. But maybe it was the Devil.”

“What do you mean?”

Esteban shrugs. “There are people who believe weird things. They say it is religion. But sometimes they let the Devil get into their lives.”

Father Willy stares at Esteban with renewed interest. Esteban is not supposed to be a philosopher or a priest or a deacon. What is going on here? No wonder the bishop wrestled Father Willy into investigating this event.

“I take it that you saw this as an altar server, Esteban?”

“Yes,” he said, “but there were things going on that were…different.”

“Tell me about Paco and Nancy,” Father Willy says again.

“You aren’t the first one to ask me about this. It happened a month back.”

“Who else has asked you?”

“It is like a big secret that no one will tell the news. I don’t know who made it that way. I’ve talked to priests, cops, parents. One day I talked to an ex- ex- ex- —”

“Exorcist?”

“Yes.”

They pause for a moment. The other sounds in the restaurant fall away.

“Was the exorcist a priest?”

“No, he was a Christian guy who had his notes on his phone. He hooked up to some server and some program that gave him ideas. I have no idea if he exorcised anyone.”

“So it is all secret?”

“I guess. I did hear a guy talking in Spanish about Nancy one night, but it was at four in the morning, on the AM side.”

“You were up at four?” Father Willy asks with a laugh.

Esteban looks down at his bowl of Froot Loops. He becomes quiet again.

“Sometimes the thought of Nancy dying is—”

Esteban pauses. Raquel arrives with a cup of coffee and places it in front of Father Willy, who is still staring at Esteban. Father Willy is quiet. He does not even grin.

“Tell me.”

Joseph Wilson taught Senior English Advanced Placement, Film Studies, and Creative Writing at Richard King High School for 42 years.

I ALWAYS KNEW SOMETHING WAS WRONG WITH ME

one hundred years ago

my grandfather

Paul Herbert Cline

fought in WW One

he survived terrors in France

P. H. died from lung cancer

when I was a freshman in college

he was a good man

a hard man and a hard-working man

a screaming kind of man

in his basement shop he taught me how

to hammer bent nails into scrap boards

and cut planks with a table saw that buzzed

like hornets in my hair

he built a basketball court for me

so that on Sunday afternoons

after spending the night and going to church and Sunday school with grandma

I could play bball with my church boys

my parents divorced

when I was three

I remember my namesake

my father and his new wife

making cheeseburgers

for my little brother Paul and me

on their front porch

with cokes in the small bottles with silver straws

I remember my father promising to take me

to see elephants

loop their tails and trunks at the circus

I remember the night he didn’t show up

and I remember my mother smoking in the kitchen while I sat in the front room

on the couch waiting

from my age of five to my age of thirty

my father was no-show father

his name my name was a name not spoken

there were no pictures of him in the house

so when my mother remarried

my step-father, Walt, I was happy

he was a big handsome man who said he loved me

he was an emotionally limited man

who grew up mostly in an orphanage

where his own mother dropped him off

when he was three

and kept her older two children with her

during the depression

he was uncommunicative

quiet but with a temper

during college when we would part

I would bear-hug him and he would tear up

several years ago during a visit with my mother

while studying old family pictures

she held up a smiling picture of her father

cached separately in a cellophane bag

like it was sacred relic

almost to herself as if praying

she whispered

my Daddy didn’t like you

because you reminded him

too much of your father

Slow Walking into Winter

It is already winter in the Midwest

In Indiana where I was born it was 38 yesterday

Already snow on the ground in Montana

Here in South Texas the temperature drops just a little each week

Our dog is gone

Missing since September

Electra is a five-year old standard poodle

A champion with great charm and intelligence

She was always an escape artist

A jumper of fences

A girl with disdain for enclosure

We think she found a leak in the pasture fence

Afterwards we discovered that she had wandered

The neighborhood behind us

We tried lost dog posters and online intervention

Watch groups and word of mouth

My wife called the sheriff and animal control

Electra became a ghost dog

We follow a lead but get there too late

I remember an old woman saying “Oh, what a pretty girl…so nice…

We fed her…gave her water…but she moved on”

I drive pockets where people saw her and

Then walk slowly down early morning streets

Or through darkened lots wielding a flashlight

Repeating her name repeating her name louder

Scanning for movement looking for a black dog

On moonless nights

In Greek myth Electra convinced her brother

To kill her mother in revenge

For the murder of her odious father

Agamemnon who sacrificed his other daughter

So that he could go to war against Troy

Not all stories have happy endings

Slow Walking into Winter

by Joseph Wilson

It is already winter in the Midwest

In Indiana where I was born it was 38 yesterday

Already snow on the ground in Montana

Here in South Texas the temperature drops just a little each week

Our dog is gone

Missing since September

Electra is a five-year old standard poodle

A champion with great charm and intelligence

She was always an escape artist

A jumper of fences

A girl with disdain for enclosure

We think she found a leak in the pasture fence

Afterwards we discovered that she had wandered

The neighborhood behind us

We tried lost dog posters and online intervention

Watch groups and word of mouth

My wife called the sheriff and animal control

Electra became a ghost dog

We follow a lead but get there too late

I remember an old woman saying “Oh, what a pretty girl…so nice…

We fed her…gave her water…but she moved on”

I drive pockets where people saw her and

Then walk slowly down early morning streets

Or through darkened lots wielding a flashlight

Repeating her name repeating her name louder

Scanning for movement looking for a black dog

On moonless nights

In Greek myth Electra convinced her brother

To kill her mother in revenge

For the murder of her odious father

Agamemnon who sacrificed his other daughter

So that he could go to war against Troy

Not all stories have happy endings

Joshua Bridgwater Hamilton is originally from Louisville, KY. He has lived in several places, including Spain, Appalachia, Panamá, Peru, and the Philippines.

Song for Misspent Youth

I ate my own desire. There where

the mirror reflected fruits, vines,

a sickening pace to rot faster

until the motorcycle slipped

completely off the road. No more

glass dance, the mortgage melted

in my hands, blindingly free

and anchor-less. One more dog-

dripped bark at a pinking moon

and you folded yourself up

in denim forever. The wind

bends trees walls cars sideways

through prism of salt crystal

prescience, reads the future

homeless sweating and grimed

planting colorful tents

along scythe-curved stretch of beach.

Make this space for the incorrect

calculation, the botched theory

thousands live by, follow the line

into pavement, dust, cotton bolls,

build beginnings again

from slant sun-ray 2x4s

and the mortar squeezed

from desperation.

Cinephile

Fall slips by like a funeral.

Students of the moon attend

silent burials, luminescent families

in obscure worlds. These 8 hour flights with

double feature, thin coffee and atmosphere

charged with no silver disc,

no gravity pull. Another astral body

snuffed, all made of light. light.

Experts in reflection, we orbit

screens — we make them

sequels to our lives, a continuum

of panel, eye, and experience.

Information fills esophageal sockets,

but the visual gulping

induces vomit, expunging of game scores

troop mvts prices candidates homicides plots

we stretch like a cat in constant convulsion.

Yesterday I recognized

house finch, wren and

tufted titmouse — birds that stay

for winter, active only on my side

of window and field guide. When the source

gives out and our sun reels down to a halt,

the picture ceases its movement,

we are forced to tease the light

out of our own cracked lenses.

Opuscule for Daybreak

Rays pierce the misty ford of morning

Hark the juncture of livid and dull

The pulse of never taking you after

A simple repast, of never taking after

The dark hollow of cheekbone

Mirror of laughter Find it

Mostly dug into the moist humus

Rotted bone and skin This stitch in my side

Woven from cowflesh and greeting the seared moment of light

Spirit Browser

The private logon opens spirit hunger,

measures dusk in parts per inch:

lawn green vectors to horizon diminish

the private. Logon opens spirit. Hunger

roots down through windows where hours blemish

until glistening ribcage unfolds elegantly

the private logon, opens spirit. Hunger

measures dusk in parts per inch.

Mulch

Desiccate splintered forest

ground up and spat out

under the feet - accumulated

bits of growth, decay, sun-

light worded into leaves

and chainsaws articulated

into kindling - like

the devastation of a bad life

ground up and strewn

in an attempt to soften

the inevitable crash

landing.

J.L. Wright

The Cabin

I can’t recall exactly which anniversary it was—our first or second of exchanging vows, the third or fourth of living together, or maybe the ninth or tenth of our first kiss. We’ve had so many milestones to celebrate over the years, each one special in its own way. But this was the only one we ever spent tucked away in a cozy cabin.

It all began with a motorcycle ride through the rolling hills of Texas’ Hill Country—the so-called Wine Country. Neither of us are wine aficionados, but spring was calling, and the open road was irresistible.

February in Texas is a gamble; the weather can swing between rain-soaked days, biting cold, or the kind of sunny perfection that teases spring’s arrival. Thankfully, the forecast was kind this time, and we embraced the unpredictability of the Lone Star State’s skies. You know what they say: if you don’t like Texas weather, just wait ten minutes.

We’d recently invested in new motorcycle luggage—a sleek, three-part system that attached to the sissy bar on our VTX 1800. Or “Vinny,” as we affectionately called him. Combined with two side bags, it allowed us to pack for a three-day weekend, though Kathy had a knack for preparing as if we were leaving for a month. I didn’t mind; she had planned this trip as a surprise. All I had to do was hold on tight and enjoy the ride.

With our gear loaded and spirits high, we set out from Buda, heading west along unfamiliar roads. Kathy had the map, and from the way she confidently navigated, you’d think she’d driven these paths a hundred times. We stopped for lunch at a charming roadside spot, where she finally revealed our destination: a hidden gem near Bluebonnet Farms, nestled among ranches and quaint bed-and-breakfasts.

As we wound our way through the countryside, I rode pillion with my camera in hand, snapping photos and letting the beauty of each curve inspire silent poetry in my head. Then, as the sun began to sink, we hit the edge of the pavement. Gravel. It’s the bane of every motorcyclist’s existence, especially when the bike is weighed down with luggage and passengers.

I leaned forward, wrapping my arms around Kathy’s waist and whispering in her ear, “You’ve got this.” She shifted into second gear, and together we carefully navigated the long gravel driveway, the crunch of stones beneath our tires a new kind of music.

At the end of the path, we were greeted by the sight of a goat ranch, the animals grazing lazily along the fence line. I was instantly enchanted. Kathy checked us in, returning with an old-fashioned skeleton key to unlock our little retreat.

The cabin was the stuff of rustic dreams. Outside, its log walls gleamed with varnish, and two white rocking chairs waited patiently on the porch. Inside, a grand four-poster bed dominated the room, its plaid bedding adorned with patterns of trees and moose. Painted paddles and scenes of fish leaping from streams decorated the walls. There was even a thoughtful touch of chocolates left on the pillows and a bottle of wine chilling in an ice bucket on the table. They knew it was our anniversary and had left a handwritten card welcoming us to their slice of paradise.

We spent the evening exploring the property, feeding grass to the goats through the fence, and making mental notes to tell Kathy’s sister Karen—an unabashed goat enthusiast—all about it. The owner, clearly proud of her new venture, stopped by to ask for feedback. It felt like we’d stumbled upon a secret too special to keep to ourselves.

Dinner was brought to our cabin: perfectly cooked steak, baked potatoes, fresh salad, and warm cornbread rolls. It turns out the owner’s husband was a chef and sommelier, a fact that explained the meal’s exquisite flavors.

Later, we climbed into bed, exhaustion from the day’s ride pulling us under the covers. Motorcycle riding has a way of wearing you out in the best possible way. No, we didn’t make love that night. Strangely, anniversaries had a way of leaving us too full of celebration to have anything left to give. Instead, we fell asleep in each other’s arms, the scent of wood and the sounds of nature surrounding us.

That night in the cabin wasn’t just another anniversary—it was a memory etched into the tapestry of our love story, warm and unshakable as the log walls that cradled us.

J. L. Wright

Poet and author lives in Corpus Christi with her chi-wienie terrier Ruby Tuesday.

Judy Mastenbrook worked as a teacher and counselor for children from early childhood through seventh grade. She went on to teach at the college level. She passed away with complications from Parkinson's disease in January 2023.

After I Die

After I die, my dresser drawers will be filled with well-worn sexy underwear, including the camisole with imported lace.

After I die, the soles of all my shoes will be scuffed, even the red sequined shoes on the top shelf, inappropriate for almost every occasion.

After I die, appalled collectors will quietly condemn my practice of covering my beds with my antique quilts, none will be folded in tissue paper in dark closets.

After I die, the set of dishes inherited from my mother, never seen before her death, will be found on the dining room table with the remains of my last meal.

After I die, books on spirit matters, mysteries, antiques, weaving, and poetry will be found on my bookshelves, while books on efficiency and the stock market will weigh down someone else's shelf.

After I die, no boxes of scented soaps will be left waiting to be used.

After I die, the shabby furniture will not be worth inheriting, but the art on the walls will be a feast for other lucky eyes.

After I die, it will be apparent, my living was used up...

Julieta Corpus is a bilingual poet from Mexico. Her work has been published in numerous magazines and journals.

Her Cross to Bear

The beast beats up his wife
For no other reason, than to
Assert his manhood,
"I own you.
I could kill you if I wanted to."

She usually curls up in a corner
And closes her eyes.
She cannot fight back, even less so
When he's been drinking,
Alcohol increases his
Physical strength---fuels
The rage within.

He is the man of the house.
The lion in wait for any excuse
To pounce on her.
Lupe is only thirty years old,
But already her physical
Injuries trigger severe seizures.
And no matter how loud she
Screams, no one ever comes
To her rescue.

The neighbors simply shut
Their doors. Her family won't
Help, either. They warned her
Against marrying him.
But Lupe fell in love.

Now, her abusive husband is
"Her cross to bear."
His children are not spared
Any of the abuse, either.
All three boys have met
Every one of his demons.
He tries to bend the children
To his will with his belt buckle,
Boots, and fists.

Years later, he grows tired,
Leaves Lupe for another
Woman. He claims he's
Sick of her seizures, and her weeping,
"You're faking all of it. You're too weak."

The beast dies at seventy years
Old while crossing a busy
Street---heart attack.
Guadalupe Escobedo, his wife,
My grandmother, outlived
Him by eight years.

Lupe

Lupe looks lovely lying in her coffin; La Presa’s

old mansion hosts the humble wake,

gnarled, toothless women chant hypnotic prayers

clutching melting candles--heads bowed, hands clasped.

A tall, rail-thin young girl stands in a corner, lids

drooping with sleep, her face grim and tear-stained.

Her mother approaches, whispers in her ear. Julia

heads upstairs to try to get some rest.

Mourners sip strong coffee, exchange quiet chatter;

people with young children soon take their leave.

Lupe’s mother, Lola, sits with two young kids,

staring at nothing, her poor heart is wailing--

the cut is too deep.

Her lovely, young daughter killed by her own husband.

Lola starts to weep.

Lupe looks lovely lying in her coffin.

No one must see the spousal abuse. Angry,

purple bruises concealed by long hair, and

the missing teeth knocked out by the brute.

He jumped on his horse when she wouldn't

come to. The men are not present; they all

gave pursuit.

Upstairs, in the bedroom, Julia is busy dreaming;

her sister, Lupita, has something to say.

But her lips are moving, yet emit no sound.

The only words she catches are: "I will be back".

Once her body is buried, the ritual begins:

Nine days of rosarios, prayers for the dead.

A meeting for women, and not for the children.

Lola chooses Julia to take care of them. But

When she enters the house, a surprise awaits:

both kids appear clean, like they just took a bath.

When they see their aunt appearing quite shocked,

they explain it thus: "Our momma was here. She even fed us!".

Lupe's love was so great, she came back

for her babies...came from the Beyond.

And the man who abused her? The men

did find him, doled out their own brand

of justice: two bruises for every single one

he ever gave his wife.

Julieta Corpus

(This is a tale of spousal abuse, the supernatural, and the power of love.

It is Lupe’s story, Mom’s younger sister-- a story I want to preserve for my brothers, sisters,

Nieces and nephews. I pray that I do it justice)

The Perfect Mistress

Must maintain a youthful Appearance, at all costs.
She must make herself
Available, regardless
Of the day or time, keep
Idle chatter to a bare
Minimum.

The mistress keeps up to
Date on the latest
Amatory skills to please him.
She needs to learn how
He likes his steak and learn
To make his favorite
Cocktails.

Any mistress worth her
Her salt, maintains a
Cheerful disposition,
No matter the situation.
She will keep a drawer filled
With lacy undergarments,
Black or red--NEVER white.

A woman like that should
Acquire the habit of shopping
And eating by herself.
She must display herself at
Various stages of undress
Whenever he is around.

The perfect mistress curbs
An urge to blurt out incisive
Words when compared,
Unfavorably, by him, to
The other.

She must forever eschew
The thought of being
Replaced by someone much
Much younger.

A mistress will learn to cry
In silence, and in dark places---
Conquer her fear of loneliness.

Permanence

You are still there beneath the shadow of our

ebony tree, laughing uproariously. I

know it is you marking a path of salt

towards the ocean. I play hide-and-seek

with your grey beard, resting my sadness

upon your shoulder.

At times, I distinguish your profile

amongst the fig leaves. I stay for awhile and talk with

the breezes which conspire to shape and then

undo your contours.

You are still there, poised as a butterfly sipping

from the petals of my silence. I see your resilience

in the stubbornness of our cactus blooming once a

month.

Sometimes you leave—in the interim, I feed on

cobwebs suspended in time. I dance a barefoot

waltz with torn pages from the wall calendar.

Upon your return, everything acquires the honeyed

scent of permanence.

That sadness

That sadness haunts her, injects her voice

with a shimmer of tears. When she speaks,

a flock of purple martins leave her lips, fly

South.

They return when Spring kisses the earth—

build their nests against her ribcage, sate

their hunger with her nostalgia.

JoAnn Sanderson taught many years in Illinois public schools before retiring in Texas.

The Incident at Swan Pond

If you had been sitting on a bench at Patriot’s Park in Lewisville, Illinois, at 4:30 p.m., on June 9th, you would have seen Mayor Sam Samuels stretching before he began his two mile run on the nature trail that wound through the park. Since he was facing east, you would have known by the directional arrows posted along the trails that he was headed down the path that ran by Swan Pond.

But if you had, instead, wandered down to the shopping area, you might have seen Angie looking at the apparel in the town’s only women’s boutique, The Trendy Threads. You would be able to watch her change numerous times into two outfits--a purple dress with a peplum bodice and a black sequined jumpsuit. But you might not have known she was deciding what to wear for her dinner date in the evening at the Lewisville Inn.

If you had then taken a short drive to the Old Town Square to visit the meticulously restored courthouse which housed the police headquarters, you would have seen Officer Perez, who had been on the force for ten years and Officer Cornelius, who had been hired only six months ago, typing information onto routine forms. If you had wandered into the office, you would have heard Perez and Cornelius talking about their boss, Humphrey McDuff, Chief of Police.

“He’s been acting pretty weird lately,” Perez spoke as he typed. “Yesterday he spent half the day gazing out the window, muttering to himself.”

Cornelius stopped typing. “I don’t know how long this can go on. We can’t keep covering for him like we have been. I’ve been hearing some rumors about him around town.”

“Rumors, innuendos, gossip, conjectures, hearsay, scuttlebutt. This town thrives on this stuff, Corny. We spend a lot of time and effort separating fact from fiction.”

Suddenly, Chief McDuff entered their office. “I want you guys in my office, muy pronto.”

If you had followed them into the chief’s office, you would have witnessed the chief’s strange behavior that Officers Perez and Cornelius had been discussing.

You would have seen Chief McDuff sit down behind his desk, the officers settle into chairs facing him, and heard the chief announce, “You will soon be called by a 9-1-1 dispatcher to investigate a possible crime scene.”

You might have observed how the confused officers shifted in their seats and heard Officer Perez ask, “Excuse me, sir, you said the call had not yet been made?”

“You heard me correctly, Perez. You will respond to the call by going to Patriot’s Park, where the body of Mayor Sam Samuels will have been discovered by a jogger running on the trail which leads to Swan Pond. The body will be found lying under some trees a few feet from the 10th marker. You will determine that the mayor had been shot at point blank range with a 9MM Glock, one bullet straight through the heart and one bullet to the head.”

Perez persisted, “But, sir, how would you know . . . ? “

“I suppose you want to know what the victim was wearing, too,” McDuff interrupted.

Hoping to take the heat off Officer Perez, Officer Cornelius intervened. “No, sir. We just don’t understand how you know we’re going to get this call.”

You might have sensed that the officers were not accustomed to questioning the source or the validity of the information the chief reported. But the officers had indicated that until recently, they had not seen the chief muttering alone at his desk, tossing police reports in the waste basket, and staring for hours at the county map hanging on the wall by his filing cabinet.

Showing no sign of being offended, Chief McDuff began describing the victim’s clothing.

“He was wearing navy blue jogging pants and a navy blue short sleeved T-shirt with a white stripe running down the right side. And although you are not detectives, I’ll tell you that the murderer’s motive for killing Mayor Samuels was that he had been cavorting around town with the murderer’s wife. Since there were several joggers beginning their five o’clock run, I expect the call will be coming in soon.” Chief McDuff stood and paced around the room. He walked to the window and opened and shut the blinds several times before slipping an unlighted cigar between his lips.

Perez looked up at the ceiling, and Cornelius looked down at the floor, considering the details the chief had reported. After a brief silence, Officer Perez suggested, “Well, Corny, we’d better head out there and check this situation out.”

The chief laughed. “Hold on a minute, boys. He’s already dead. No need to rush.”

If you had been observing the officers closely, you would have also sensed that they had agreed that they had matters to take care of before they went to the park.

Then you would have seen Perez and Cornelius stand and walk slowly toward him as Perez announced, “Chief, you’re under arrest for the murder of Mayor Sam Samuels. It is necessary for us to handcuff you to the desk while we arrange for support to handle this situation.”

“Well, Perez, I guess you’d better read me my rights. And since you insist on adhering to the proper protocols, will you hand me my phone to call my lawyer? Oh, and will one of you fellas call my wife? Tell Angie to forget about meeting the mayor at the Lewisville Inn tonight. Tell her he had to deal with some unforeseen emergency. She hates to be kept waiting, you know.”

If you had chosen to leave the office after the two men handcuffed McDuff to the desk and had followed Perez and Cornelius into the hallway, you would have heard the anxiety in Cornelius’s voice.

“Perez, the chief is crazy as hell. I don’t know what to believe about what we’ll find out there at Swan Pond.”

After hearing this conversation, you would have probably rushed over to Swan Pond to see if the mayor were dead or merely suffering from a gun shot wound. But, perhaps, you would have found him sitting on a bench, drinking from his bottle of electrolyte-infused water, having completed his two mile run, fit as a fiddle.

Joel Ortiz has been reading, writing, and performing poetry since 1991.

Confessions of a hyphenated Alien Spice Eater

Texas

JOEL ORTIZ

Confessions of a hyphenated Alien Spice Eater

(from Sci-Fi Stir Fry)

I was raised in the slums, or barrios as my tribe called them, in Corpus Quetzal. I was born before the great upheaval of 3663 ac. Before the Europeans began their slow progression across the tough Tejas terrain, which was rough on those pink westaches, but us pocos knew how to survive. In my youth, I had the run of the land; able to roam free and swim the swamps. I could have done without the mosquitoes, but we used to rub alligator fat on our bodies to keep them at bay. Now don’t get me wrong, I didn’t come from some out in the boondocks tribe with no civilization. The Gulf State had the best parts of Federation living; & we didn’t know the terrible ways people treated each other. I speak many tongues; us natives had to learn different tongues if we wanted to move up in the world. I learned English by watching telebision and reading everything I could get my hands on. I read a lot in my youth, books from the old world, bibles and myths, and manuscripts from the state of Teotihuacan. I learned my mathematics from the chichenitza method and equations of the Pelanquean Theory; & followed the phases of the moon. I knew my astronomy and knew of life off-world. I read everything from Shakespeare to Rodriquez. My school, really a mud hut with chalkboards, was a missionary school ( that’s how I learned my Latin). All my reading had provided me with the intelligence that I was able to enroll in private education in the big city, in San Montezuma II. It was at the esquela, where I studied Astro-anthropology. During the day, my studies kept me busy, while at night, I ventured into the night-life and learned some culture. I was amazed at how dirty everything was. I noticed no one paid attention to me, like I was invisible. And if I was spoken to, it was always the same pregunta, “ if I spoke English”, I used to hate that. But I reveled in my anonymity and even got to smoke broccoli on the Kukulkan pyramid steps!

After graduation, I moved to ATeX, not wanting to come home. I wanted to make my own way in the Federation. So I felt bad when an apocalyptic ray came from the cielo and decimated the entire Gulf civilization that I called home.

Lost and orphaned by tragedy, with no broccoli that could ease my pain, I did the one thing that most people who have left Tennessee have done. The ray that incinerated Corpus Quetzal, came from out in the stars, from the Pleiades Concentration. I wanted to suit up and make them aliens pay. All my fathers had been soldiers for the Federation of States. I had seen how the service legitimized their claim of citizenship and I wanted to be accepted without qualms.

I knew of the war that was going on there, the spice wars, where the Mejica cartel had started to trade hybrids, snow, and opium; in return we were getting spice. Spice was the dried up plant from Kenaqlan, which supplied the user with a high, unknown. Many supplanted their exploratory experiences with spice, and within a short time, the masses of our Mother had become addicted. It was making mucho dinero for the Titans of Federation Industry, they fed this drug to the natives, and we folded upon ourselves.

Our great Federation was drafting men and women, training them to kill aliens. Most of my friends had gone to the Great War in the Stars of Orion, and those that came back, were lost in their heads, drooling over themselves, with limbs missing, or nightmarish trauma. How they howled and cried, late in the night; but our government kept them dosed on synthetic spice, and they never did anything else but tell stories of the asteroids they touched.

At this time, I was living day to day, as a thuggee; able to procure a few grains of synthetic spice each day, and spent my time with the veterans and lived a life of numbness. I listened to their stories, and sat in amazement of their space adventures. Me wanting to enlist kept getting in the way of me wanting spice.

I met a former colonel of the space wars, who would get government regulated spice, real spice, la pura. It was when I was living with the Colonel, when the death ray occurred. I decided to leave my mother Tierra and I wanted retribution. But vengeance can sometimes begin with poor choices. It was the Colonel's property, Sartre and I had broken into and taken libras of pure spice! It was a junkies score! What we didn’t know, the Colonel was a member of the Air and Face, he was a damned GrandDaddy!

Satre and I, two stupid tecatoes, made a grave mistake. They got to Satre first, with the promise of 75% spice, and he was such a dope; he was given a hot shot full of strychnine making his death slow and painful. I jumped on a bus and shot out of town quickly.

I went out to the new beach land in Buddha, and lived with a Trinidad smuggler. Out there, on the irradiated beach, I was a survivor, but was constantly looking over my shoulder, waiting to see the Colonel and his friends. I wished to be out in the Seven Sisters, getting retaliation and mining my own spice in my spare time. Even in times like these, I had big dreams.

Thru my Trinidad friend, I was able to find my contact with the Mejica Cartel. You see Trinidad used to sell broccoli to make ends meet, so he knew who to connect me with when I explained my foul plan.

We borrowed a whip and went south, crossing the Toxic border zone and drove into Aztlan. Everyone we met, challenged us, but Trini and I were no push overs. All my fighting in my youth: wrestling with alligators, fighting with the Karankawa, to surviving the ATeX streets; all that resistance had toughened me up. We met up with my mothers family in the state of Tamaulipas, with the Chichimeca’s and they helped us get to our destination. It was in calle Catorce where I found my cousin, Jesus. He was straight from Quetzacoatl, my savior, who made money by crossing the badlands, and delivering kilos of pura to the Federation States in the metropolis of Los Diabeles. Jesus took us through the ruins of what was left of the Aztec Empire; past the Toltecs, through the hallucinatory mountains of peyote, on thru to the great land of the Maya. Our destination was the Caracol. It was there where we were going to hitch a ride to the stars.

I paid a large sum of dinero for the first leg, which was to Mars, my first destination. Trini stayed in Aztlan, looking for passage to the Columbian Islands.

On Mars, we docked at New Constantinople, and I went in search of a ship that could take me the 2nd leg of the trip to the Seven Sisters. I noticed on Mars that the poor look the same anywhere in the universe. I was able to disappear and merge with the refugees who resided there. It was in the warrios, among the many cantinas, that I found my fate.

I found a person willing to take me to the Seven Sisters, but the way he kept asking if I was going solo, should have been a warning. He sold me on the idea he was a member of the Scions of Revolution. And I fell for it, stupidly. Roger told me getting through the asteroids was going to be rough, but I did not know how scary it would be to pass rocks of ice larger than our moon.

We passed Jupiter and it was so gigantic, I wondered what I was doing far away from my mother Tierra. I decided to retrieve my rucksack and get a little taste of spice in space time reality. I inhaled the dirt, and tasted the warmth spread from my head to the rest of my body. I was on a major nod, and I had messed up. There were people on this ship that spied me; it was obvious I was vulnerable. All it did was make my other shipmates envious of what was in my rucksack. None of us were paying attention when our ship sailed into the Kuiper belt. And the ship was rocked back and forth, with asteroids, meteorites, comets of ice, satellites, it was ugly and it happened quick.

When I woke, I was on a satellite of Saturn. I could tell because the planet was so beautiful to my naked eye, so close, I could touch it, but far. The ship had crashed, scattering us all. I was marooned. I never saw my other shipmates, so they either left me to die, or they are still floating in the Kuiper Belt.

I survived on what provisions I found in the crash sight and though I looked very hard and for my attache, I never tasted it again. It was the worst sickness. Between bouts of vomitus, this eater of spices, sobered with mortality. Why did I chase these substances when I rejected all that my ancestors had given me? This malaligned life I thought was civilization, but was I willing to travel to another galaxy to kill aliens because they mined a spice us humans had no business to consume. I was lost in a world, that didn’t like me, and was willing for citizenship, by any means necessary. Oh Kukulcan, how low I have become!

I rationed my food and learned to become one with the universe. Even though the sun was much farther away, I could feel the heat, if I opened my soul. So I tried to leave and become a citizen by killing enemies for our Federation, but the mother god had different plans for me. I was not made to kill. I was not made to waste away, but I have become one with the dirt I live on. I was to have an adventure to rival one of Odysseus, but I got stranded before I ever got to war. I have learned that I had Kukulkan in me. I don’t have to chase it to another galaxy, but I have it where it's always been, in my soul.

This is my story, my caution, my confessions. I had once been a hyphenated alien spice eater, but now in my last moments I am human. And though I will pass many miles from my mother Tierra, I know that I will be in Kukulkan once more. I will do better next time, I will care for my brothers and not bring them down. I have grown much, this time, ME, who once thought my destiny lay in the stars-to kill aliens for their spices- have been met with fate.

As my breath is taken from me, I reside in a peace that I would not have found in the Sisters Seven. My faults have landed me on this satellite of Saturn and I look forward to what awaits me. No longer asleep with the lure of the world, I am now free of the spice that has destroyed our great mother Tierra. Sincerely, without wax, I am just a human who was granted a life, my forefathers could never imagine. I leave this account as a caution, for all other lives on planets like Tierra. Don’t chase those fleeting spices, for nothing will come of it, but pain.

I'll sit here and imagine the warmth from the faraway sun feeding this Titan that has claimed me, and will walk into Kukulkan. Til my next life on my mother Tierra, I will get it right. This being an account of a life marooned from the mother Tierra-now stranded on a Titan of Saturn.

Inter hominem esse desinere (to cease to be among men)

BUY SCI-FI STIR FRY

Texas

by Joel Ortiz

Spying UFOs in the desert on Christmas Day

While this mescalero indian

Chews buttons in the dry valley

Sewing patches over bullet-riddled skin

Taking arrows out of skyscrapers

Blood raining on painted faces

Cannibals in the gulf reliving

Forgotten lives in friendly times

As much as you try, you will never leave

The dry mesquite trees burning

Bluebonnets littering the paved roads

Don’t mess with Texas

Played on a slide guitar,

Psychobilly noise on a turntable

And us Tejanos drinking late into the morning.

The Ballad of Juan Boogie and La Chona

The fractals in the trees, every day, every-time, These mathematics in space & time.

Looking at nothingness - becomes looking at everything at the same time

What happens on one side, happens on the other

The trees come & go, every season Just like Michael-Angelo

Trees will always break, the sun will always rise & my death will someday come-

From the ink dieing/drying on the page-The page is dead before I set foot—

They were a modern couple, where she worked & He played crazy for money & for likes

Always walking, always up to something, always breaking something new, but he broke her heart instead, belittling her like another dog on his leash.

● The karankawa once lived where my home is today, now a charro Chicano resides in this swampy, mosquito infested, land making, salt shaking, nueces engaging

The pecans down here are natural only these days they are found

El Gallo

There he struts, like some brown Travolta, tres viejos in his hair,

Demanding a tortilla in the chinese buffet,

Once he brought his own music, Bach on the tape recorder, on full blast

For all the other patrons to admire along.

Sometimes, he sports a mullet, sometimes it looks like a haircut that is half

Finished.

Always a connoisseur of things, but doesnt know how to let others in his circle,

He will get the girl, by the dawn's early night, he will get the girl,

Or he will fight you because there is nothing else to do.

He will claw your eyes out, watch out, he fights dirty,

But he will get you an Uber to get you home safely, for he is

A gentleman of a different stance, as he stands in your house

And with mere looks, he impregnates everybody with a desire

To live.

Este Vato knows how to live. He drinks the finest cervezas this

Side of the river, he has honeys by the wayside,

He gets deals like you don’t know. He will bust out the snow,

But only on occasions when the juras are not around.

How he knows the juras not around, he tells us his

Grandfather is a curandero, and we all stand in awe

Of such folk-like stories, we believe them late into

Middle age, waking us up in the night, still sitting on your chest.

Stealing your breath.

El gallo is a good friend to have, he backs you up, even when the

World shits on you, he will come and brighten your day, he will come and

Make you laugh. He will come in his new Mustang, and he will crash it

Outside the dope house.

That's the gallo, and no matter what, he gets up for work the next morning

As if he went to sleep at nine.

What a Day

When I can hear the leaf express
From river to creek to pond
To sounds from the
River front ideas from mountain ranges
2 hours behind the current

Forgive me God,
Let me love, love the fishes
& bushes, the creatures & discomforts
My saliva encrusted tuba;
Sitting alone like me in the lunch room
Regaling tales to imaginary audiences

He plays in his tub, Godzilla of Lansdown
Crushing lives like empty cans of sprite
With this, I speak into existence,

The love that is grand, the love that is
Here, is here for you; if you just
Look up & notice the Pleiades will
Always be above your heads.

Does truth really ring true? Or is this
Another tale we placate to ourselves
Like late at night, tying off that
Dinosaur, one more time; this is it
This is it, no more drinking, after this
Last one, just one more, just one more,
Just one

Can’t seem to keep my face clean of
Hair, as fast as I shave, as fast
It grows back, as fast as his
Fingers plucking notes from an
Invisible guitar, my guitar hero
Caught the bus to the big-time
Several years ago, I was with
Him to the end, getting plastered
Wasted, to black-out-drunk
As he boarded that ship
& set sail for then end of the
World, just

O Christmas tree, oh Christmas tree,
Why all the ornaments, ornament overlord
Overloading the outcomes, an outcry for
Outcasts, I’m out, three strikes beyond

Death

Working is for stiffs. These pictures I take every day, these computer chips, getting to me, typing with my fingers takes so much energy. My skin is cold, with millions of goose pimples covering my body. Someone once told me when you get chills like this, it’s because there’s someone walking over your grave. This person has never been sick, not like this, not like me. Look at that guy, my manager; I need to talk to him. I need to get out of here. It’s been eight hours, and I don’t feel so well.

Michelle, the pretty little milf, looks at me and asks if I’m okay. Her perfume, some expensive brand made to turn on men with their base pheromones, just makes me wretch.

I run to the restroom with my head wet with sweat and fall to my knees. That last smell from Michelle’s breast or breath or perfume smells like the worst trash to me, makes me lean down and place my hand on the edge of the toilet rim, not caring who used it last or who cleaned up and flushed.

Nothing comes out because there is nothing in my stomach. I talk to the monsters, spit dribbling out of my mouth, my nose running, long trails of snot-dripping into the dirty toilet, goose pimples up and down. I’m so cold, but I’m sweating as if I’m stuck in a sauna., I just need a little taste.

After about fifteen minutes of losing it, I go back to my job of taking pictures. Richard, my stupid manager who always likes to give me lectures on tardiness and absences, asks if I’m doing okay.

“No,” I manage weakly to say.

“Can you work the rest of your shift? You have been leaving quite early a lot recently. Is there something you would like to talk about? You know we are here for you.”

I listen to his speech, and I know where he is going with this lecture. Little skeletons dance in his pupils. Beyond his eyes, behind him, I see a couple of my co-workers, and they are looking at me funny. I know they are talking about me, just like Rich here is talking about me, in a way that he wants to tell me something, but he can’t quite get it out. So, he beats around the bush, to use the thousand-year-old cliché. How many thousands of years have people been trying to say one thing when they really wanted to say something else entirely, a completely different thought than what was conveyed. The subconscious, the sublime, and my manager want to talk about my problem, but all that oozes out is ‘problem.’

Rich’s coffee-tinged bad breath makes me think of all the dirty sewers and dirtiest toilet bowls, and I make this retching noise with my mouth as if I was going to throw up right there in front of him. It is loud and surprising. He looks at me with fear. Michelle has a look of disgust painted all over her pretty china doll face. I retch again and run to the restroom.

As I’m kneeling at the toilet bowl, Richard comes in and asks if I am feeling okay. Again, with the stupid questions. After hearing me for a couple of more talks with the monsters, Richard says simply, “Ivan, if you need to go home, go right on ahead. Go ahead and take the next day off as well, but I expect you to be here Friday, okay, don’t let me down. C’mon Ivan, go home and get some rest. You don’t sound so good.”

It’s like I get well for a second as I wipe away the tears from my eyes. That Rich, he’s such a good man, I keep taking advantage of him, and he always gives me the benefit of the doubt.

I clock out at the machine and retrieve my empty bag from my locker. I slap the bag over my shoulder and leave that cold building. It is early morning, about 7:00 am. I have been working ten hours straight, and I am really sick. The traffic smells really get to me. I immediately set my hands on my knees and vomit. This time something comes up. It is this world, with its natural smells of oil and gasoline filling the streets. The odors of the sewer mixing with the trees mixing with dumpster mixing with perfume are too much for my guts. The morning dew, the dumpster, car exhaust, doggie-doo-doo, her hair, my bad B.O., it all comes up with the sniff of the real world, and when it comes up, it burns all the way up my throat as I spit out the bile that I had deep in my system. It is white when it hits the sidewalk, and I hear it sizzle so early this morning.

I manage to finally get over this predicament and find my way back home. I get in the door and immediately drop my pants and take off my shirt. Cold, in my boxers, I go to my room and get underneath my heavy covers. It is wintertime, and I am under one of my favorite covers, a blanket that I had for over ten years given to me by this old girlfriend of mine. I don’t know why I hold on to it when I no longer have any contact with her, but I can’t throw this old and tattered blanket away. We had both been discarded and lived through so much life together; I just could never get rid of it. I get under the velvet cover and pass out to nerve-shaking nightmares.

On a boat, in the middle of the ocean with rain falling over me, waves trying to capsize my boat, and I’m shivering in this Arctic Circle, looking for heat in all these freezing temperatures. I’m lost for years in the northern seas, freezing my heart all alone, with not even a deckhand to alleviate my loneliness nor to help me remember what warmth was.

I wake up with sweat-soaked sheets stuck to my cold skin. I peel them off and throw them on the floor. The clock tells me I was asleep for only twenty minutes, and I can’t sleep anymore.

The phone rings. Veronica asks how I was doing, and I tell her not so well.

She asks if she can come over. She had just visited Chuy and says she bought some oatmeal crème pies ‘would you like some.’ That dirty water, that Texas T, that dragon she is bringing wakes me out of my stupor. Just knowing she’s coming over makes my sickness heel a little bit.

It’s true I love the dragon, but Veronica is my true love. Veronica I met when I was still in high school, in my Italian class. I was trying to learn Italian to read Calvino, but all it ever did was get me more confused within my English tongue. But Veronica was in my class, sitting next to me. A very beautiful woman, she had me breathing every time she spoke to me. We started to hang out after school, and eventually, we became an item. Unfortunately, when I left for school, she stayed behind, and we drifted apart, but upon my graduation from the university, I began to experiment with some drugs until I found one that was to my liking. When I came back home, the dragon was always on my mind until I found Veronica again. It was a quaint existence together. We did everything together. She lived with me off and on; sometimes, when we get too crazy on the dragon, she would go back to her stepmother’s, but lots of times, we struggled together.

She’s been out of town to visit her real mother in Houston. She had some methadone with her for her trip, but now since she’s back home, she wanted the real stuff. Unbeknownst to me, she had gone to our dealer’s and picked up some dope for the both of us. My nose stops running, and my bones stop aching. I go to the restroom and get out my works.

In an old cellular phone case, black leather, I unzip it. It consists of a bottle cap, already dirty with remnants and traces up and down the cooker. There is a little makeshift handle to hold it. There are a few Q tips, a lighter, of course, and last but not least, a needle.

I expect her in fifteen minutes, but after thirty minutes, I call. She says she’s on the way. I sit there on my couch, cold as hell and feeling very sick. I try closing my eyes, try to fall asleep, but sleep never comes. Every time my eyes close, strange faces appear. Great big, horrid figures with teeth sharp and eyes dark as dense forests, where monkeys live and yell, screaming at the moon, these faces, these harbingers of doom and terror live in that darkness when my lids are closed. I open my eyes, sweating on the leather couch, with my skin stuck on the leather, feeling like melted saran wrap on my skin. So uncomfortable, I try to sit on a blanket, but my sweat keeps making noises on this skin of the couch.

The television holds no relief either. It’s nothing but talk shows of who is whose daddy and how my daddy beat me when I was a child or mock court shows where people are suing other people over parking in the wrong space. I flip the channels for about ten minutes until I finally turn the sad television off. Nothing.

I call one hour after Veronica first called, and this time no answer. The harlot. Where could she be? Who is she with? I know she’s with someone, doing my dope. She’s out there sucking someone off. She’s in somebody’s trailer dancing or in the back of some car with her panties on the floor. I bet she’s on some bed getting drilled, and well, here I am sick as a dog, waiting for this, this, damn that, Veronica. Why won’t she hurry up? I love Veronica, and I love what she has for me. Both of these warmths that make me feel good about myself. Those two warmths that give me confidence, I need them right now, right here.

Ring ring goes the phone. Is it my dope, is the only racing thought through my sick mind. It’s Veronica. She got tied up, so she says. By whom, I wonder? But she eases my heart by saying she will be here in a few minutes. She’s just down the street. Get everything ready, she tells me, and I tell her I already have, and now the time I’ve been waiting for is so long, but so short.

I hear her car outside my window. I already have the door unlocked. She comes in like nothing. Places her bags on the couch. She comes to me and kisses me, but her kisses leave me so weak. Where’s it at? are the only words I have for her. She digs in her pocket, like a drill in the earth, looking for oil, and in her tight pocket, she pulls out a balloon. A pretty good red balloon, larger than usual. She throws it to me, and I unwrap it on our coffee table. I have a shot glass of water, a cooker, my lighter, and two needles set on the coffee table, sans the coffee, sans the big books.

Busting the red balloon, I let obsidian tar fall onto my cooker. It is a big piece of tar. It bubbles up after about thirty seconds of flame underneath it, and my guts begin to boil along with it. That smell of the drug rises up from the spoon and hits my nostrils. Immediately I want to throw up again. I start to retch, but I stop myself because I don’t want to spill any of the drug on the floor.

I draw up about seventy-five units of complete darkness. She sits next to me. It is dark in that syringe, and it looks like the depths of the deepest oceans.

“Hit me first,” she says, holding on to my arm, squeezing it tight.

“You know I always do, baby.”

I look in her face, and she is looking at the point where the needle is about to enter her. “Come on,” she whispers.

Her eyes flutter as I push the plunger. Her arm falls limply between her legs. Her mouth opens wide as she falls back on the black leather couch.

Maybe it’s too much, but let me find out on my own. Veronica, mummy-like, on the leather couch, lies there unresponsive. I pick up my needle, wishing to be on her level of highness. With my queen, my princess. I just follow the rest of my scar tissue. A joke enters my mind, of the two greatest inventions in the world. Heroin and the hypodermic syringe. Cracking a smile, I push the drug into my vein.

My eyes get heavy. I close them, thinking of the rush; it feels so great. Better than sex, better than orgasms. It’s warm, enveloping. Better than food, better than water on a hot day, hot and overwhelming. I can’t remember if I remember anything at all, but my eyes close quickly. That’s the only truth because when truth is found, it comes the quickest.

There’s no holding Veronica, no taking out the flowers, but numbness. Beyond clouds. In dark shapes coloring my vision. Blackness comes on so quick. This nothing, where hearts are not next to loved ones. Alone in this void, this is what I’ve become. Nothing but dust, nothing but dirt, but…

Remember

Remember, bout 20 years ago, we drank all night, our noses were sore, our alcohol was go gone, and I wanted to keep going, you wanted to keep going too, so we went to Uncle on everhart looking for some warmth that I like, but there was none to be found. So we went to your friends, but they were out, we went to Molina, nothing. Went to the cuare, nothing.we went to all the haunts, and nothing. We started at 4 in the morning, came back to our place on 14th, driving in that little mirage, hoping for the worst in our lives . It was on weber, in front of heb, he saw a rabbit running across the street, I said that ain't no rabbit and slowed down. He opened the door and a lil dog jumped in my car, a lhaso apso, so beautiful just jumped in and said where you've been, you're late you know. We found a bum in Morgan and he said yeah I can get it, ho down staples, turn in holly and wouldn't you know back at uncle's place, lol, which we already knew there was nothing there. This was now noon, so we spent from 4 am to 12 pm on the hunt for more dirty rugs, cause that's what we liked at that time. We never got our fix that we wanted, it wasn't till later when everyone woke up that we were straightened out, but we did have a dog that I named pennies from heaven, because that was all the joy we were gonna get that day. Peace and love to the new year. Thank God I'm not on the hunt anymore, but those that are, one day you will realize that nothing will ever fill that void, just enjoy the time we have now, on the greatest day of your life, until tomorrow begins...

Every once in a while

Every once in a while I can look near the edge of my pupil, and in that brownness, i can see a pin prick of light emanating from the inside of my eye, so I look in the mirror, and sometimes, sometimes I can see a whole other world, a different world, much like this one, but with a few differences, similar in the sense of having the same names, same people, difference being, I'm left-handed, no I'm right, sometimes I get lost in the crack, trapped in this eye, I'm here, I'm there, i am, i think?

And I'm Running

And I'm running, running out of time, running to lose weight, running from my problems, running towards happiness, blessing those around me, wanting to change, late in life, sometimes undecided, out of money, wanting more out of life, whoa, slow down, this is too much, this is not what I wanted, was this what I really envisioned, who are you, who am I, where do these questions come from, i want more, no one wants to give, i have so much to give, but no one wants anything but harm, i don't have harm I don't have fear, i have love, love of undesirable...

Sometimes You're Just Damned

sometimes you're just damned

books, that spine I love, curving at the right

pages. Her dog ears I flip in my mind, kissing

each sentence I injest into my system.

I've given it all up so I can enjoy a few

paragraphs of intelligent chatter

I've ignored many possibilites many lives so I could

stick to those dirty words

i've taken ferries to countless libraries

and devoured each lover from its brain and secluded

many covers i just blew away

in my own i have stolen unmade masterpieces

and gave my full attention to such minds games the best

of the race have created

to be seated in rooms of your brain, you move so subtly from

reading to writing. what you read becomes the very word you

write. These fictions, these tigres de los suenos, as that

educated prick so rightfully wrote

life is very much like a book

you can either take your time and inject the wisdom

or enjoy it fast & move on to other works of pulp

in the end it comes from someone's library, it was somebody's book

it was my book but now i see that the mending department doesn't

even want to put together my torn book

i'll just let it fly off in all directions, my pages fly away like icarus, with no

destination

destination can be substituted for destruction

a reconsctruction of tales with no heads

for we dread what poetry can give birth to

oh poetry, i'd die for you

anytime, anyplace

POETRY!-----OPEN YOUR EARS FOR WE'VE GOT TO RECITE THE TIMES

POETRY!-----KEEPS US TIGHT AS SHRUNKEN SWEATERS

POETRY!-----HOW I WANT NOTHING ELSE BUT POETRY.

Texas

Spying UFOs in the desert

While this Mescalero Indian

Chews buttons in the dry valley

Sewing patches over bullet-riddled skin Taking arrows out of skyscrapers

Blood raining on painted faces

Cannibals in the Gulf reliving

Forgotten lives in friendly times

As much as you try, you will never leave The dry mesquite trees burning Bluebonnets littering the paved roads Don’t Mess With Texas

Played on a slide guitar,

Psychobilly noise on a turntable And us Tejanos drinking late in the morning.

(i wrote this one, behind the annex some 13 years back, and i remember the good man Robb Jackson, an English teacher at Texas A & M University Corpus Christi, he was the only person in this part of the world who would go visit the lowly inmates of Nueces County and help them express themselves through the written word. he was looking for a diamond in the rough when he was out there, i was already a diamond, i just like to live rough, all for sake of art, and somehow i got lost in all roughness, i was there initially for different reasons, but along the years, the substances just got more and more under my skin and i could not do a damn thing without any substance inside of me. nowadays, doctors would say, oh you just self medicating, and i said, yeah, whatever, gimme a new scrip.)

Amor Fou

I still dream of you even though

you hate me,

I am nothing but an ink spot on your paper.

I want you to feel my leaves underneath your feet,

My roots, they grow in your undershirt,

I like you better when you are smiling,

But when I'm around I make you awkward.

Late at night when I’m busy writing my novel,

I stop and think of you,

I know you don’t want to hear this,

But I’ve got to tell someone.

I paint pictures of photographs and super-impose you in

Each instant,

For example, I have this photograph of a lonely tree

I shot when I was in high school,

I took a picture for sometime in my later years,

I want to find it in my box of unusual photographs,

my pictures of strange women, whom i tell my girlfriends

are my sisters,

pictures of found brothers,

Found mothers, found fathers,

& some of them are fond nature photographs

I've been thinking of painting this lonely tree,

By a silent pond with quaint mallards

still as if they once were

A hoax of the loch ness monster

Or the Nueces River witch,

Which one is more appealing, yet lately i've been wanting to put you

In the painting

I did not want to fall in love with you,

But sometimes when the heart starts

Beating again

What must one do to keep it beating day in & day out?

III

I know you are not confused,

But i am all nitwits, pulling my hair,

Pulling my teeth, trying to find some

Gold in me to give you,

I can be cheap & give you this,

Or say nothing, but a cheap kiss,

Can’t you hear my heart late at night,

The cops were called last week,

Neighbors complaining that there

Was this constant beat that

Wouldn’t let them sleep.

Sheepishly I told the police it was love,

The officer smiled & told me to go

Inside & try to put a pillow

Over my heart, he didn’t want to come again & arrest me for

A count of mad love

So i tried quick drying cement,

But the movement never let it dry.

I don’t want to compare you with anything,

I know i'm not supposed to love you,

But when the insects keep telling,

What the birds keep chirping,

What the gorillas keep grunting,

The babies keep crying,

The snakes keep hissing,

The music notes i keep plucking,

It knows something, nature only colors it,

All you have to do is come,

All i have to say is to speak,

& then our pens will fall in love,

With each other's form of ink.

JOEL ORTIZ

Joel Ortiz has been reading, writing, and performing poetry since 1991.

Boy Scouts of America

I was scared of what was going to happen. I had to shit really bad because my apprehension was at the max. Here I was, a pussy who had loads of education, who could sit and converse about the intricacies of French literature, easy living for most of my life, and here I was grouped with the worst of the state. In the middle of the group I was put in. I was handcuffed to the murderers, the thieves, and the rapists. To the lowest dregs of society I was lumped with. There were plenty of gangsters, plenty of kids who wanted to be just like Dad, doing time upstate. There was no shortage of wannabes, wanksters, and shot-callers. All from behind bars, no less. But we were here amongst friends, where we would be able to say whatever we liked to say. There was this guy from Houston that we called Houstone, who was the speaker of the tango blast at that unit. He was an important guy, who had favors coming down to him at all times of the day. He was about my height, but stocky af. Intimidating at times but I was glad to call him friend. There was this other guy, Larry, a li’l dude , a mocoso as my mother would have called him, He would get all his commissary money and buy a big store every two weeks, if he was lucky. Sometimes he was only able to make store once a month, because his family could not afford to send him any money. I felt for the vato, big time, Dude had the same birthday as me, but he was a snot nosed little rat, who gambled all his food and lost it all like a sucker every two weeks.

You see, these were the days when I learned how to live locked up. It was most assuredly a crazy time. To pass the time, we would either make fun of each other, draw, or tell tall tales, stories of our crazy times. Some embellished their lives with some bold ass lies. But it wasn’t like anybody was gonna fact check stories to separate the liars from the men. Houstone described these liars the best. He once said, “they like the army, ‘be all YOU can be!’”

One day I went to the shower room to bathe, and I found Houstone with a broom handle around his neck, doing twists in the shower room with all six shower heads on all at the same time, making it HOT in that little shower room. He would make it feel like a sauna sometimes. And especially in the summertime, when the sun cooked us as if we were sardines in the prison, with no leg room for us tall folks.

One day, as we sat around, watching either Law and Order on the brown tv, while the black tv was tuned in on some sports. The black tv was always on some kind of sports. The brown tv was for entertainment . Whatever movie, or funny sitcom, was on the boob tube, we had the tv locked down for our enjoyment. In those days, it was the office, which no one liked to watch. I would see it by myself and laugh myself silly, while all the other inmates just watched me and studied my every move.. Sometimes this other quiet guy would come and sit with me and laugh this tiny laugh that made me think what was this guy in here for. I don't think he ever understood the show, I truly believe he was plain crazy

This one guy from San Anto, Sam was his name, and fucking up lives was the name of his game. He was one of those guys who liked to say the same phrases over and over, to make sure everyone heard. He would always say’chale con ese jale”, especially on the days they took us out on the Hoe Squad. The hoe squad was the job given to all the newbies on the unit. They would wake us up at 330 am for breakfast, and we went out to work at 500 am with hoes, tillers, and other tools to work the fields. Those mornings were quite hectic, with us waking up at 300am for breakfast, and before we were taken out to the fields, we had to go wait in another line where we would exchange our old scrubs for clean ones. It felt good to have clean clothes. Those were the little things which I would not even think about in the free, but locked up, you learned how to juggle your time before someone had juggled you.

“Chale con ese jale,” Sam had kept saying this one morning. As we were tilling the grounds of Garza West, there were about a hundred of us with hoes, and we were just tilling hard earth. , turning over the hard dirt, over and under, ad nauseam. As we were walking to the water wagon for a break, San Anto came up to me and said,

“Yo, yo, yo aggravated poet let me run something by you. You know how they got witches, and they be black witches right. And black witches are evil as fuck, right, you follow me. Well, I’m thinking over here about what if there was something more evil than black witches.That would be some horror-show straight out of stephen king And it hit me Aggravated, I thought of it,check it, WHITE witches, do you see, and you see it. WHITE WITCHES! That would be as scary as my next parole hearing.” and he laughed this loud obnoxious laugh that turned the heads of everyone out there that morning. :”HAHAHA” he went on, amused with himself for coming up with this as he took his turn on the water wagon.

Santos was my homeboy from the same town as me. You usually hung out with people from the same place you caught your case from. Santos had his bunk right next to mine, and I noticed that he did nothing but draw. This guy reminded me of my brother, so it was easy for us to get along. Santos was also a tattoo artist. The kind that gets favors done for him. He had most of the guards become cool around Santos, and they would bring him gifts from the free world. They would come and bring him pens, pencils, erasers, that were always confiscated because they were considered contraband. These guards would give him lots of breaks. It was said that he did the tattoo of Selena on her brother's arm. I believe it. He would sit around and make some bad ass art.

I sat at the craft table, because the craft table had enough to eat every night. My craft that I sold on the inside was my ability to write. That was my hustle, if you needed an essay, I was the guy you went to, and for the price of a soup or 2, I would write whatever you paid me to do. I would write letters, regular letters, love letters that were panty droppers, Dad letters, letters to their judge, and letters to their lawyers. IT was weird, I tell you. In my downtime, I would sit around and write poetry. The government thought it had stopped me from writing, but it did nothing of the sort.

This one afternoon, we were all sitting around, during the winter, and to keep warm, we told stories of the free. We were all sitting around chopping it up, telling stories of this or that, just rapping to each other. Houstone was eyeing me, he was wanting to know more about me. He was the speaker of the tango blast, so it was his job to spot the enemy before they came and stabbed you. “Aggravated, why don’t you tell us a story. Tell us what you were thinking of. I see you smiling, and when you smile your brain is working overtime. You look like the cat who ate the mouse. Just tell us one story, we all want to know a lil history lesson of what you have been thru.” I continued to smile and thought of this instance in my life that I would think about frequently since I have been locked up.

“Okay, okay, let me tell you all a story that gets me thinking daily of the mistakes I have made to find myself in this prison. Let me take you back to when I was a teenager, In my youth I was a scout”

“Alarva, don’t tell me you were an eagle scout!”

“Yes I was. It was such an important accomplishment in my young life, that I really ponder what went wrong. However, I once sat in this meeting, a Boy Scout meeting. There was Carlos, who was the coolest guy on the planet, and his brother, Louie, who was the Scoutmaster. There was Gabe, who turned out later to become my godbrother, that fool was there. And this crazy little white kid, Charlie Hustle, we called him. We were an all-inclusive group, with living barely above poverty as the glue that held us together. No matter what, poor kids will always stick up for other poor kids, because we all know how bad times can be. There was Moses, Adam, and Joe. And Ruben. Can’t forget about Ruben. who had been my best friend since third grade, so it was only logical that we would stick together. And CHi CHi was there, Bobby was his name, and putting out fires was his game. It was his dad CHI CHI SR, , who brought out this article to the scout meeting. He stood up in front of us, us young scouts who were 13 to 17-year-old Chicano boys, who had so much pent-up energy, and nowhere to put it. Thank God, I had a father who would insist on us being in scouts. It was a fun time. It was a great time. I loved being a scout, everything I learned on how to live life I picked up from the scouting program. Even my love of having sticky fingers was perfected at the summer camp when we would steal watches and wallets from our fellow scouts because there was nothing else to do, But that is an entirely different story. Back to this. So CHI CHI SR, gets in front of us eager scouts. And says

‘Listen up, everybody. Quiet down and open your ears. I have this article here that I would like to read to you. It is a story of statistics. Who here knows what statistics are? Nobody, well it's just a fancy way of saying numbers. The article proposes that out of a group of 15 scouts, these were the possibilities of what will become of yourselves. This is what will become of you all. I guarantee we will have someone that is joining the military.’ This was a sure thing for many in scouting, it was a way to set us up for joining the big leagues.

‘Five of you boys will work for the city. In different jobs. From working in sanitation to building in construction. There may be a city manager among you, , maybe even a mayor, will have been a scout.’ I look at all these young faces and wonder who is going to be a garbage man and who will have an important job in the medical field.

‘There will be three lawyers.’ And I see some of my fellow scouts nod their head in agreement. They will be that lawyer, they will strive to be that lawyer who fights for justice for your fellow human and they will try cases that will change laws.

‘Among you will be an architect. He will draw the infrastructure of where we all live. There will even be a president who will have been a scout in their youth. One of you could be the next Kennedy.’ At this , I look at Gabe and I remember him nodding like yes that is me. I’m gonna be president someday. The confidence he had as a kid, I loved and admired.

‘But not everybody will be living in positive times. For there will be a drunk or two among you. And there will be a drug addict, that is the sad, sane truth. And there will also be one of you who will do time in prison.’

When he said this, I sat there and I looked at all the other scouts in that room in the Methodist Church. I looked at the kid who wanted to be president, and I knew even then that he would not live up to that dream. I did not see the city manager, nor the mayor. We all knew who would become the town drunk, for Charlie Hustle already had a head start in that direction. I could definitely see who would join up in the military. The military is the only option out of this life for many of us in our situation. And as hard as I looked at everybody in that room, I could not tell who would end up in prison. I thought what kind of crime would be committed that one of us scouts would have their freedom taken away. But I looked at all these scouts, and I see, from face to face, from brown face to white face, to brown face and I don't see it. I couldn't see it happening to any of us. Maybe if I had a mirror, my answer would be different, but I could not see any of us in prison, because out of all them scouts that day, it was me who had made it to the Big House. So I sit here in prison now, and I think of that day a lot. As I'm shitting, or working out doing another hundred push ups I see myself sitting here in prison, thinking of that afternoon, and it comes to no surprise to me that it is me who ended up in la pinta. What went wrong that prison became my school of hard knocks. I was not to be that person walking the university grounds, running late to my class. I was the person who stripped when told to, who ate when told to, Who knew that I would have to start over again when I got out of this incarceration. And I sit here, today, reflecting on that afternoon when a future was read to me and I fell for it , hook line and sinker.HMMP who da thunk life would turn out this way.

They all broke out in an uproarious guffaw.All these prisoners of society, who liked to stick up people for their money and jewels. All these thieves who stole everyday to survive these mean streets. All these junkies who will try to kick again next week. It was then that I understood my place in the world. I was just a reject of society. I was the unwanted one who would be turned away at plenty of jobs. I may be a dishonest person, but at least I am honest to myself, if not anyone else. This is the hand I was dealt and I will be proud to show my scars and flaws. I may not be perfect, but I try to be a good person with a great heart. I can only try to be a human, even though I persevere through mountains of bad luck. I can only look up because I am already at the lowest. And I laugh along with my comrades, my prison friends. And I bring out another paper to write another letter to a girlfriend I do not have.

Writers--Joe

Please Close the Windows

Levántate Mi Hijo

Excerpt from LA ROJA

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Cinephile

Opuscule for Daybreak

Spirit Browser

Mulch

After I Die

​

Lupe

The Perfect Mistress

That sadness

​

The Ballad of Juan Boogie and La Chona

El Gallo

​

What a Day

​

Death

Remember

Every once in a while

And I'm Running

Sometimes You're Just Damned

Amor Fou