Читать книгу Hustle - David Tomas Martinez - Страница 12

5.

I was two

in a ruffled blue tuxedo

when Donna Thomas

and David Martinez

exchanged vows

and traded rings.

In a decade

their marriage misfired,

their hearts stopped

spinning and roses

rising from vases

slouched.

My grandmother grew

roses and cactus

on the side of her house;

in a front yard of dirt

grew half-sanded cars

blooming with Bondo.

On the porch,

I listened to my grandfather

sing in a rusted tongue.

His sharpest tool was tomorrow.

The ice cream man’s song

was my jam;

I’d jump the low,

leaning fence surrounding the yard,

slapping the light pole as I went by.

At night, young men

huddled under the yellow light,

their pants sagging,

their homemade tattoos

thickening with age.

I laughed at how

their underwear in jowls

hung past their belt,

at the broken belt loops

toothed with dirt.

Me and my primas played

under the kitchen light,

our bodies bumping against the table,

tipping the chilies and spilling the salt.

Outside, blue and red rotated

on the sheet over the window,

the tied ends on the curtain rod

flickered like Christmas

while cruisers converged

and black men ran and slid

across hoods. When

everyone was braceleted,

cops talked into their shoulders

in squawks and pauses,

picked up the spilled pockets

and tipped-over bottles,

laughing as they nudged

the boys against

the hoods of their cars.