JUKE
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JOINT
On the Bus from Mexico City, Yung Bans Raps Dead Faces Dollar $’s All I See, Cash Rules Every F*cking Thing Around Me and the American Part
of me is vibing because no one cares, because everyone
is too busy being baptized
from a long day’s work. And after Mexico, I can’t go back
to what I thought I knew about appetite, about
hustle beneath any sun. There is no gold here and sometimes
there are no teeth. They say
chilangos can’t be
trusted but I am surrounded
by the electric rush of pulque in my mouth.
One time, I was ready
to be stripped. I was lost in a labyrinth of broken glass
and stray dogs, and a group of chakas were drinking in the middle
of my chest. In my mind, I imagined it: giving them
my backpack, my wife’s expensive camera, clearly out of bounds
from where we were told to stay. I was caught
slipping, was ready
to pay the price of my privileged sneakers. I walked up
to ask for directions, told them
I was lost but glad to see them. They looked
at me then pointed towards what seemed
a dead end. But as it turned out it wasn’t
an ending as much as it was
a beginning.
Danza de los Huichilobos
Tonight I didn’t find my animal. I starved
my mouth until I was left in wild. Tonight
my moon is unsurfaced and rotating
off-axis. I admit: there is privilege in moving.
The continents spreading
across the surface of my expansion, the tectonics
of my arms and legs as they crash
into the space around me—a dark room, gin,
this DJ spinning oldies. I can’t dance. Can’t bend
the angles of my desires until they spill their secrets.
My wolf is still out there, on 19th & Broadway,
a desperate skeleton of itself. Maybe it’s lost. Maybe
it’s dangling off the shadows of a space dream.
Maybe it’s waiting in the parking lot
next to the armored elephant mural. When I left California,
everything felt like a river in my brown hands. It felt like the rush
of everything I’d barely spoken. I called it something like a dancing
hunger. Have you ever fed the bones
of your neglect? Torn the flesh off your comforts
to feed your wonders? Questions are formed from the blood of my being
and perfect answers aren’t important. I’ve moved across territories, across imaginary
limits I’ve boxed around myself, carrying my hands
like music in a muted conversation. I imagine
it’s like aiming a rifle, its hugging weight taking
shape in front of me before taking something more.
Alan Chazaro is a half armadillo half chameleon Mexican American poet. His books, This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (2019), and Piñata Theory (2020), are available from Black Lawrence Press, and contain scriptures from an in-between world.