His tongue drowns / my neck and my hopes / turn back to CNN

Does not flinch as my boot rolls the pine limb over / The night is wet with icy stars sprinkled down its ribs

Call her First Lady of Fania Records. / Insist she’s flip side of Celia Cruz / cutting her smile like caña, or Aretha’s / 
Puerto Rican sister.

Rumors said Tupac would rise three days / after the fourth to spite the holiday. / He’d push his thorns through cracked cement / 

Photo Credit: Rachel Eliza Griffiths

he / consorts with Five-O, who sets speed traps, branding / hot tickets at lunchtime; he chats under fumes with fire- / men who siren their way through the pallid smoke in / his apartment complex; he knows that the green Lexus / sitting on 22s belongs to recalcitrant butthole living / off burnt out mom in apartment 2B, who gives her son / all her pocket change, living in her big guilt.