Standing across the table (there were no chairs in the house) was my father, Emilo. The table itself was a sturdy rosewood, and one of the last items in the home. We had sold our belongings after mother had died -- my father said it was to help pay for school. We had each kept one tattered shirt and one nice shirt which I would wear to class every other day (we were shirtless in this moment, no need to sweat in clothes unnecessarily). We had one pair of jeans each - both tattered and mended with old quilts taken from the tailor's trash can. We also kept three of mom's blouses - one for me, one for father, and one for her. We were close to pawning hers, though. On the table, near my father (and, away from me) was my semester's grades and a polished bottle of amber liquor. His skinny arm swung across the table, smashing the bottle of gasoline-smelling alcohol against the bareness of the dry, wood wall. The liquid seeped into the pores of that portion of our home leaving a dripping stain. It never really dried. Two weeks and three days later, my father would flick the ashy edge of a cigarette **** into the wall. He was too drunk to know he wasn't in Hell.

I want the night to stay its night
Stay its blackness and dimness
I want the night to drop its curtain
To cover all the realm
Where humans roar louder than beasts
And do more murders than tigers
I want no day come into light
For hunters can see the clearest
And blood looks the reddest
Let the black sweep things down
From the dreadful streets to the peaceful forests
The world of fear doesn't deserve the light
'Cause darkness is sweeter than nightmare

Before the civil war came
It was an assurance to slaves.
And then Lincoln freed them.
Now he is long in his grave.
Yet so many of us are still
Hoping for better times now.
We slave and we save but
We still don’t know just how.

What’s up there in the sky?
I want to know that, and why
Need we wait until time goes by
And why can’t someone try
To tell me there is more than dew
And why there’s nothing we can do
To get that delicious piece of pie
Now and not in the great by and bye?

I’m not asking why the sky is blue,
I know that and much more too.
I’m just questioning why the rich
Keep getting richer, not me and you,
And exactly what we all must do
To reverse an ugly, constant drain
Of those with little but not wealthy.
That can’t be a healthy kind of strain.

Yet here we are, century after century
Then when we go to church they tell us
To pray to the sky, to some invisible guy
And the rich tell themselves we are jealous.
They raise the prices so we can’t buy much
Then they create wars to totally scare us,
But when they need some cannon fodder
They definitely never will spare us.

It’s easy to cheat if people help them;
They know most of us are too silly
Most of us will blame the wrong thing
And not see them cheating ***** nilly.
They know we will go back to magazines
Vote just the way their daddies said.
They ignore what all the headlines mean.
Just like that, peace and freedom are dead.

In the mustard yellow smoke that floats
along the streets there drifts
a burned and greasy smell through shot-out
windows from frying pans ignored
while on the phone to a neighbor.
I long to turn the burner off,
but it smells like home to them.

By ****** puddles warm with sewer gas
I pass with too much grace—and weave a
dainty two-step down gaping alleyways
beneath clothes
strung out like a lifeline,
sifting murky sunlight
through threadbare cotton.
Old and ugly patterns dangle
from a nylon cord--
cut it and they fall
against the wall and are ***** again.
I shove my hands in my pockets and walk on.