CONTENTS
Publisher’s Note
from Poems Across the Pavement – 1989
Running to America
Somebody Was Breaking Windows
Rosalie has Candles
The Monster
Palmas
Piece by Piece
The Calling
from The Concrete River – 1991
Watts Bleeds
Tía Chucha
Night Dance—Watts 1975–78
The Concrete River
The Rooster Who Thought It Was a Dog
Black Mexican
The Bull’s Eye Inn
Waiting
Don’t Read That Poem!
Jarocho Blues
Jesus Saves
The Blast Furnace
They Come To Dance
Carrying My Tools
Bethlehem No More
Every Road
Every Breath, a Prayer
Lips
from Trochemoche – 1998
Meeting the Animal in Washington Square Park
Victory, Victoria, My Beautiful Whisper
Catacombs
to the police officer who refused to sit in the same room as my son because he’s a “gangbanger”
A Tale of Los Lobos
Woman on the First Street Bridge
The Rabbi and the Cholo
Cinco de Mayo
Civilization
Fire
Red Screams
A Fence of Lights
Next Generation
At Quenchers Bar When You Said Goodbye
The Face on the Radio
The Object of Intent Is To Get There
Untouched
A Father’s Lesson
Francisca
Suburbia
Believe me when I say …
Reflection on El Train Glass
The Quiet Woman
Questions for Which You Are Always the Answer
“Eva sitting on the curb with pen and paper before the torturers came to get her”
¡Seguro Que Hell Yes!
Poem for Shakespeare & Company
¡Yo Voy Ami!
Rant, Rave & Ricochet
Cloth of Muscle and Hair
The Old Woman of Mérida
from Notes of a Bald Cricket
New Poems
My Name’s Not Rodríguez
Coal-Seller in White Dress
The Cockroaches I Married
Mickey Mouse Pancakes
My Nature Is Hunger
Exiled in the Country of Reason
Passersby
Listening to Return To Forever’s “Romantic Warrior” with Susana in an Empty Room of my Recently Rented Echo Park Apartment
Mother by the Lake
Suicide Sweet
Sometimes a Man Comes
Time and Nature
Loving What You Leave
Ritchie Valens Doesn’t Sing Here Anymore
Mexika Science
The Gold Beneath Our Feet
Banned
Fat
The Chuskas—Navajo Land 1998
Rez Dogs
Untitled
¡Si, Se Puede! Yes, We Can!
Chuparosa (Hummingbird)
Existence
Nightfall: Poems to Ponder in War and Uncertainty
The Wanton Life