Vickie Vértiz
Claire Anna Baker "Inside the Whole"
Don Mario
after Ko Un's Ten Thousand Faces
Twenty years since Acapulco
Don Mario’s first life changing
tires, alternators, motors
light-bulb fury
One bedroom in the City of Crowded
three granddaughters, a pink fixie
dolls with tangled hair, polka dot socks, one
daughter-in-law, a mustached son
his curls wavy flecks
Don Mario's bed: a plaid couch, arms
covered in mugre
In the living room, cockroaches
darting bullets in the dark
the in-law gordita doesn't
clean or know how
Tomato soup crust on pot lips
dishes filmy thick with wait
It's not Acapulco
No one here cliff dives, just swimming
bare chested on freeways
Don Mario makes bubbly rubber
cheese pizzas between dominoes
Pictures his neighbor Elvira
watering her front yard
a botanical city garden
Red geraniums obscure her
husband grunting
The black Toyota
truck’s teeth dangle
taped on with grey masking
Don Mario is dreaming of driving
his plump neighbor on her mandados
: church first, the 99 cent store
bursting with school kids, y luego
the flower shop, ten dollar bouquet
the cemetery for her first daughter
As he kneads the dough
he thinks of her bready nalgas
Not the pimply hemorrhoids
he would get
if his hands could really find her
He saved, borrowed, bought a new
White Nissan, drives like a calabasa
Down Florence Avenue
Itching his mustache
Passes a mini mall of Texas Donuts
lay-away jewelers
The morning pizza dough
packed into red plastic
square bags, Don Mario escorts them
to stucco apartments
Shaved heads
don't tip, blue baseball
caps give exact change
Twenty four years of gurgling
engines at $8 an hour
He knows what he can have
We could be novios, he told Elvira, A escondidas
Why hide? she says. No,
we're friends so long
She doesn't need a daughter
-in-law who can't wipe
her own face
He stays away a bit
then calls on her
to ask again
Only the lime tree
leaves hears them
Shaking slowly, a branch bends under
the weight of a chicken
lost on a high limb
eying the distance
to the roses below
Señor Moreno
after Ko Un's Ten Thousand Faces
He told his wife Goodbye, Amor
Nos vemos, when he left
And let his knees fall
to meet the road
Took his black metal lunch pail
sitting shotgun in the blue van
Put on a beige jacket
Zipped up, his arm, muscle
pulled tight against his chest, seizing
the frost of his breath
Felt his eyes closing
black pebbles embedding
in his palms
His face calm with grown
children living, grateful
to see him rest
He may have been chased
by four children and wife down
Specht Street wailing
His bus driver's uniform starched
too drunk to go
to work, but dutiful
to his craft
He may have been jealous of
the milkman, the butcher, the Sunday school
teacher but he loved his cielo
his wife, his sky till death
His skin the browngreen
of oaks, stubble peppered with snow
His glasses government-issued
darkened with sunlight, lightened indoors
He went to work that last day
Like a match in a box, his
cheeks pink from sulfur
his hair white as smoke
Bio
Vickie Vértiz was born and raised in southeast Los Angeles. Her writing is widely anthologized, found in publications such as Open the Door, from McSweeney's and The Poetry Foundation. Her poetry collection, Swallows was released in 2013 from Finishing Line Press. She is a candidate for a Master of Fine Arts degree at the University of California, Riverside.