Читать книгу Hustle - David Tomas Martinez - Страница 8

CALAVERAS

1.

A car wants to be stolen,

as the night desires to be revved,

will leave a door unlocked,

a key in the wheel well

or designedly dropped from a visor.

A window will always wink,

to be broken by bits of spark plug

or jimmied down the glass.

This is mine.

Where is the window to break

in your life?

In a backyard off the 94, I demonstrate on the moon

how a dent pulled ignition and a toothbrush for a turned key

easily swoon the inner workings of a Ford.

Push the dent puller in,

turn the triangle, burrow the screw,

and metallic light falls in twirled shavings.

Before I snap the weight I say

nobody gets caught with this,

not because this is a felony,

we speak of prison inevitably,

as likely as sweeps and raids,

as common as falling.

Prison, for us,

taxes and deaths.

Nobody gets caught with this

because I took it from my grandfather’s tools.

. . .

To shoot someone we needed a gun;

Albert said he could get a pistol but we needed a car.

That’s how, at midnight, on a Tuesday,

we strolled down the street with a dent puller

trying to murder a man.

Not wanting to steal a car

from our neighborhood,

we take alleys we shouldn’t,

until cops chase us across

eight lanes of freeway and backyards.

To get away, I ran in a canyon

and a field of cactus.

The needles ripped my clothes,

left spiked fruit behind my knee;

with a knife wet under a garden hose,

I cut away skin and spines.

With arms around my boys’ shoulders

we walk home, but only I see god.

It was the Lord from his La Jollan gates,

the big white man in the sky hollered at me.

In pale distance and omniscient beard,

in sky clouded with open azure:

No murder this night for you,

nor any night for you,

only a hot bath and plate of papas fritas

from a grandmother’s hands

and four hours of needles

shooting from the skin

and holding the faucet like a gun.