Month: June 2015

125th Street

125th Street

125th Street.

Is this the mouth,

or the ass

of the city?

 

How did everyone decide to dig ditches?

Trenches before they were

too far to go back so

they connected the holes instead?

 

The 4 gently trembles.

Waking bleary-eyed keyboard musicians

with screeching after

falling with one foot

into a pit.

 

Happens every time.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 5/2015

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Randomness. That’s all I have to say. Hopefully writing with more effort coming soon. 🙂

Rican Enough

Wait, wait!

My fingertips aren’t orange enough yet!

 

Hold on a sec!

I’m not done stretching my earlobes.

 

Don’t ask me to salsa.

It’s the one question I can never perform.

 

Heaven forbid!

Ave Maria!

My hips don’t orbit my feet!

Are they supposed to?

 

I left my beads at home.

What the hell am I supposed to do

now that I’m naked?

 

Naked and still burn.

Never rust just right enough.

Guess I’ll have to peel off another layer

and try again.

 

Beg the sun

to bloom my ass like it does the flowers.

 

Fire, fire, fire!

Fuego, fuego, fuego!

Am I hot enough yet?

Am I dark enough yet?

 

I haven’t checked in a while,

but I’m hoping today is the day

I’m Rican enough.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 6/2/2015

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

Wrote this on my morning commute. There’s been this constant pressure for as long as I can remember to prove my ethnicity. Was randomly thinking about it this morning and this poem was the result.

My favorite stanza is the fuego part. Also PSA, you don’t have to prove anything to anyone. Be proud. This is still something I’m trying to learn myself. 😉

Himrod Street

He smiles like grease.

A crater by his eye like his skin was sampled

by a teeny tiny spoon.

He hides his shame behind long bronze hair,

but is still brave enough

to hold my hand.

Knuckles like marbles – maybe rocks.

Boy was a real heart throb.

Or more like a heart attack.

No amount of Ajax could

rescue this fourteen year old girl

from cutting Spanish class to walk down Himrod

hand in hand only to get home and

not talk on the phone

with Mr. Vegas in the background.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 6/1/2015

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

 

No comments here. Just memories of a fourteen year old girl getting walked home by her boy. 🙂

I still feel like I can work on this more. For now, it is what it is.