Tag: brooklyn

Dekalb Avenue

Dekalb Avenue

Dekalb is titi’s house.
Grover Cleveland’s tracks lead to 
Dr. Mederos on St. Nicholas,
Chinese on Wyckoff by the B38,
Corner of Irving, a brick building — beige. 

Crosses jutting out all over.
My whole childhood, shuttered.
Sophi’s hair salon after.
Tony’s Pizza on the corner of Knickerbocker.

The cuchifrito, Cecilia’s, where titi always gets the mangú.
Next to the newsstand where uncle Louie gets the gum that tastes like soap.

This is titi’s block.

Across from the place you can rent for parties.
Three creaky metal studded flights up 
that are shorter than the length of your feet
so you always feel like you’re falling even when you’re climbing.

Her bell never works. Gotta scream.
From out her metal barred window, she drops the keys.
Dekalb is the turrón titi ate with me.
The clothesline outside her window, wooden clothespins pinched between her lips.
The Reggaeton, the Salsa, the Merengue, the Bachata,
at all hours of the morning, never letting poor titi sleep.

The only survivor now is the pizzeria, and the tracks.
The rest you can only visit in memories, photos, or Google Maps.
Yo.
They even gentrified the piraqua stands.

Leave my ice alone.
Dekalb Avenue. Not “Deh-kolb.” The L train says it wrong.
Dee-Kalb. It’s titi’s house. It’s childhood. It’s home.

Feeling nostalgic. May polish it for “sound” later. Love you, titi! Muchiiisimo!

A Halloween Memory

A Halloween Memory

All Saint’s Eve, daddy took little miss piggy

to the Cypress and Harman bakery,

where they gave her cookies and pennies,

and her pumpkin was brimming,

until mommy stripped wrappers

off tootsies and suckers by evening.

Inspect for catheters, needles and blades.

Don’t get too gleeful,

mommy checks for evil and lethal –

all to keep her piggy’s kisser safe.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, Oct. 2017

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It’s not Halloween anymore, but better late than never. Didn’t originally title this – but it is what it is. 🙂 Once upon a time, my mother would check every single piece of candy I received on Halloween just to make sure it was safe before I could eat any.

Little Cousin

Little Cousin

My little cousin’s got the Brooklyn.

The kind from the underside of pinched Corona caps,

stoops littered with sunflower seeds,

and Beenie Man grating from a recorded cassette.

 

I have other cousins who were cured.

Left cemetery meetings amongst Kings and color initiated school holidays.

My aunt grew tired of sleeping away from the windows and cured her children the only way she knew how –

Pennsylvania.

 

My little cousin though, he’s got it bad –

the Brooklyn.

The kind where no Jansport or Jordans were safe.

The kind where kids were offered Remy Red from paper bags out of cars blasting “infiltrate”.

We didn’t mean for him to get it, but it was like he was destined.

 

Lured by Wyckoff summer nights.

Enticed by windshields of Puerto Rican flags and “Rollin’ with the Clique” down Onderdonk.

He must’ve been seduced by starry names we wore on necks, fingers and belt buckles like voiceless shouts.

 

Maybe he caught it from someone else?

Foxy, Chino, or was it Willie?

Was his name Willie?

Willie who wore foundation two tints too light,

lookin’ like an unslept, unbrushed Tego Calderon,

who strutted up the block to talk about love and dick before I’d seen either?

 

Was it all the unready mothers raised by unready mothers,

then trying to raise sons like sacrificial lambs?

Like offerings to “outside”?

 

Was it that my little cousin heard?

Heard women talk about “the club” the same way some country folk must talk about “the city”?

“Better than being out here in the sticks. Why ain’t we at the club?” as if there was only the one?

 

Did my cousin see?

How shadowed men jittered in doorways across the street from the abandoned warehouse on Willoughby?

I remember his ear to ear grin as he told me he saw

me kiss the pothead I pined for from Stockholm,

the one with a topless fairy tattooed under his forearm.

 

I think he’d already showed symptoms of having it then,

but we had hoped he’d outgrow it.

Doesn’t really matter now

that he’s a grown man.

 

They say he’s got the Brooklyn terminal.

Here we are now, years too late,

trying to save him.

It’s up to the blood in his veins now.

If he’s not careful,

 

Brooklyn will kill him.

 

And we’ll continue after,

asking ourselves for the rest of our lives,

how we could’ve prevented it.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez,  August 2017

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Got family on my mind. Also wondering if I can find a WordPress theme that respects a writer’s line breaks, indents and spaces…

Broadway Junction

Broadway Junction

Going to Broadway Junction used to be like the beginning of a fantasy novel.

“Only the very brave or the very foolish
dare venture
to the Junction.”

“Our kind are not welcome
by folks who dwell in the depths of Brooklyn.”

“Few of us journey there and ever return!”

“Take care on your travels and be wary of monsters.”

Red and blue warbled the walls where my cousins slept
away from the windows.

I remember the relief my family had whenever I returned.
My limb inventory was successful and yet,
each time I came home, I was a little more jaded
than the last.

Like a war journalist who managed to survive the trenches
and lived to tell the tale.

– Rachel R. Vasquez,  July 2017

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Broadway Junction used to be a dangerous place, but then again, so did Bushwick. How the times have changed.

Mourning for Bushwick

Mourning for Bushwick

I mourn for the ghetto.

A White Castle next to

an incongruous condo.

 

I weep for rickety fences and rusted gates.

When the L train was yellow and grey.

Before they raised the rents.

Off the M, when there was salsa at Borinquen.

 

Oh, way back when

we occupied steps,

claimed a corner, taken a block.

Skies with pendulous banderas

over the May rising flocks.

 

Dominican bodegas.

They called me rubia,

before baristas and yoga gyms

landed on Troutman.

 

Before history got wiped.

They call it gentrification.

I call it genocide.

 

An invasion, a regression, an infection

of organic produce.

It once was wild, and brimming with pride.

Oh, Bushwick, I miss you.

 

The hermanos, the primos, the chachos, the homegirls.

Knickerbocker has gone silent.

It’s the worst deaf I’ve ever been.

The worse death ever experienced.

Where my people at?

 

Oh, it burns so bad – it hurts.

When my home feels like an alternate universe.

I feel like a refugee, a survivor, a remnant.

Eventually an artifact.

 

Slabs of fresh paint while tackling lower crime rates.

I’m grieving for this place, for milk crates and domino games.

I sob for the mom and pop shops.

This place has changed too much and too fast.

 

Something’s breaking in my heart,

A phantasmagoria

of bubble tea spots, vintage store fronts and health food stores.

Now until forever, for Bushwick, I’ll mourn.

 

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 4/30/2015

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Been wrestling with these feelings and this poem for the last week or so. The neighborhood where I grew up has changed so much while I’ve been away – it feels strange. It doesn’t feel like home anymore. It feels like I’ve been gone too long, and now it’s too late. It feels like I took for granted something I’ll never have again. Sad part of growing up I guess.

 

June

June

Sunhats shave ice blocks under umbrella stands
Strap backs pendulum their hips
Water runs through flip flops around gradient sprayed concrete
Ink snakes along bronze waists
Party horns honk on trollies
Whistles screech
Where the white T’s palm rubber to a wall
Speakers ride their shoulders
Husky chants: “Que bonita bandera”
And the malta men spinning black dotted blocks on turntables
Shake their beaded necks like maracas
The cowbell-
tap- tap –tap-
tap- tap-
The rope slaps with clapping girls
Singing past the mating calls
Hissing from glitter fenders at snappy fingers
The hoop ears with stoop scuffs on stringy rears
They only stop when the weasel pops on postered trucks
Fabric rises like war filled spears
The crowd’s amok
Between flickering lights and clashing beers

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 4/28/2008

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I wanted to wait until summer to put this up, but with the freezing temperatures and snow as of late – I guess I became summer sick.

This was inspired by what my neighborhood was like as we neared the Puerto Rican parade in the summer. Bushwick was full of pidaqua stands, salsa booming from the cars with giant flags draped across their trunks, street merchants selling all sorts knick knacks, kids playing hand ball in the parks, jump rope, ice cream trucks – man it was the place to be! If there’s one thing I miss since moving to the Bronx, it’s that Latin fever that happens once the summer rolls around, nothing beats that atmosphere. Nothing. Nada. I haven’t found a chuchifrito place around here yet that sells coquito, and that makes a girl a bit home sick…

Photo from Eric Espino @ https://ericespino.com/

Circus Act

Tightrope flashing
Footwear swaying
Below
The Banners start waving
On comes the theatrics
Clowns run doing acrobatics with popcorn snappin’
Knick knacks blastin’
The audience
Turn their backs
Past fireworks flarin’
Blue and red blaring’
To the spatter and racket
Like confettied ketchup packets
Glass flickers
Footsteps crackle
The batten is broken
Simmering pyros
The ringmaster leaves the stage
Scraps and echoes
The act has made the front page
But the trainers have lost their animals

– Rachel R. Vasquez, 3/6/2008

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