Pilsen

She Stood There Crying

It was 1AM and they had just made love on the brown futon in the living room. It was late but still loud from the trucks rumbling up Ashland Ave. and the fan they’d pointed at themselves. When they were done they slowed down and their minds came back to them they lay together, holding each other, feeling the sweat that made the sheets cling to their backs, staring at each other’s face in the streetlight that made its way through the blinds.

“I love you,” she said, smiling.

“I love you too,” he said. He smiled too, and looked down to the condom still on him. “I’m gonna go take this off,” he said, and kissed her.

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When Pilsen Was 18

You were there playing
Hockey in its streets
Countless winter days
Thinking like a Blackhawk
And swinging your crude
Stick hard–like a pro
In the steely gray
Ice-covered asphalt.

You were there when spring
Arrived dressed in green
With a florid face
And you happily
Readied–mentally
For a fresh game
Of Chicago-style
Softball at Dvorak
Park and held your breath
Expecting your friends
(And a certain girl
You fell for) to show.

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Blue Island Avenue

The all-night taco stand simmers in the

midnight heat. The unsaid social group meets again

for yet another round of comradeship and slurred

serenades to themselves. Before stepping out the

door to the Street of Oblivion, they order one

more taco de sesos for the road, in a last-ditch

attempt to access higher levels of intelligence.

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Caminos de Michoacán

I found you in a bar

that feels like Mexico in the early 90s

the bar where everyone’s dad

used to get fucked up,

my friend Genesis would say.

It’s a space idle and frozen in time,

stuck between the U.S. border and gentrification,

the kind of bar I imagine my father’s father sitting in

drunk on communism and tequila.

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