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Jhonhary Mayorga Dec 2015
In this life, I have seen the valley of broken dreams filled with the souls of taqueria entrepreneurs. I have seen gleaming grills, Hispanic frills, greasy thrills. I have seen spirit thrive in the eyes of men armed with bank loans and family recipes. I have eaten their food, delicious beyond necessity. I have experienced the magic of taquerias and restaurants.

And I have seen that magic die.

I've observed the life unfold, unfurl with a magic to behold. I have seen that magic served in a half-empty restaurant that Frontera has outsold. I have had the magic gone, replaced by payday lenders and takeout from Taiwan. I have seen empty storefronts and the straggling last days of taqueria entrepreneurs. And I grieve every time at the lost loans and lost hopes left behind. But tonight, there will be no grieving. Instead,

Let us eat magic in their memory, enjoy the grease that will surely send us to infirmaries. Let us celebrate the time they had, the tortas, tamales, and leftovers taken home in a bag. Let us celebrate the doomed Mexican restaurants.
Chris Behrens Feb 2013
Standing just a foot away
In leather boots and sequined jeans
Five foot nine, lean and mean
at the Taqueria, El Si Hay

Pink cellphone and cheap sunglasses
Waiting in the order line
A pug-nosed man in chinos passes
and paces round to pass the time.

When it's cold I miss the birds
It's always nice to find
the easy flow of Spanish words
and English mixed in kind
A short one in media res from this morning.
James Gomez Apr 2015
Flavorful combo
Word sauce and meaty nuance
Poem burrito
Hungry for delicious expression
Pits and pockmarks
flit and dart
across an infinite ceiling.
Random synchronicity
plays patter song
stupor and languidity
The orchestra conducting
purple and yellow
to a sparkling, a
crushing crescendo
falls like a wave on tastebuds, tempting.

She lingers like
fog on a pane of glass
A sharp signature
impaled on a pile
of dreaming dust.

Like a rushed column
updraft through a house
of leaves blank and staring.

A mark from the
back of your palms up.
Your fingers stuck signing
a language sang by the blind.

How did she stay so long
A force hidden in neuron canyons.
A Gypsy camp lodged
between cortexes
spinning silk into a
muffled gasp, a conspiratory shuffle.

She lingers like spines of glass
in nailbeds, planted sweetly,
with the best of care.

Laughter in an asylum
electroshock dreams soaked in sweat.

Grabbed my brain like a chemical symphony.
Painted pictures of pivotal seconds,
wrapped up and romanticized.
Dreamt about.

Your lilting language planted
little honeypots deep in my palms.
Sparked fire from entropy
lighting a city in my chest.

But now these buildings tower
like Goliath in David’s dreams.
I need to escape
I need to slide out of
this sleep you’ve monopolized.

******* dreams
like smokering fingerprints
left on the cleft of my conscience.

The old taqueria on Victory.
The Bourgeois Pig.
The bitter spice of winter
painted over the cracks
crumbling the walls.

These waking hallucinations
haunt my habits.
Still frequent the holeinthewall
dives in my heart.
Catalina Dec 2020
I am 15 years old and when my home is too full of rage for me to fit, I squeeze out of the cracked walls so I can meet up with my Black boyfriend in a park across my neighborhood.

This one time in the spring rain he told me he loved me and it felt like magic was real.

I step into a well maintained 1997 conversation van

Watch the conqueror dance across my Brown father’s lips
He turns the key in the ignition and looks at me with the kind of fear I don’t understand
His voice drips inside of my skull like honey or venom

“The world is harder when you’re with them”

I sit in silence because I know that wasn’t a question
and we are late for my dentist appointment anyway

So, I cling to the arm of every Brown lover.

When I’m alone I escape
Google: what is racism
Google: how to not be racist
Google: can Mexicans be racist?

.

I am 8 years old sitting upright in my bed
I pray to a White looking God that he will fix me.

I bargain with him for blue eyes that sit flush against my face
Hair that looks like the girls on TV
Just cut this big, ugly nose off of me, I don’t even need one  

I will do anything
I just want to be normal.

At school, my friend Kaylee tells me that I can’t come to her birthday party because her mom says mutts
aren’t allowed in her house.

A week later there is a new girl in school who speaks Spanish

The teacher sits her next to me. I say hello and apologize with my smile for not knowing the right way to say her name

I understand we are not the same.

.

I am 22 years old and somewhat college educated.
I refuse to apply for any scholarship labeled “Latino” because they aren’t for me.

¡And on my life!
I’m not gong to be just another White girl who claims to be 1/16th Cherokee.

My social justice warrior friends and I all discuss our privileges and oppressions
We map them out in increasingly complex narratives
Lay them on the table like constellations

I learn about White guilt, White fragility

When my Brown father asks what I’m studying, he tries not to scoff.
He owns toilet paper with Barack Obama’s face on it.
He’s a Virgo.

In the summer, I transcend.
My skin never burns like my friends’
Instead, it glistens like predators’ eyes.

“Wow, you actually look Mexican! I hardly recognize this picture of you”

.

I am sitting at the kiosk in the mall where I work.

The wealthy White woman comes up to me and coos over my long dark hair
She grabs a handful for herself 
Marvels, asks where I am really from.

So long as I annunciate clearly, correctly
Answer politely when they ask me
“What are you?”

So long as I remove all of that unsightly black hair that White women never have sprouting from their *******.

No one will ever see the teeth shaped scars on my tongue
I tell myself I am “protector”

.

I am 27 years old and living in the Whitest city in the universe.



My coworkers invite me to join the POC affinity group
POC means Person of Color
My POC-ness fits me like an expensive gift two sizes too large



Suddenly, I am alone on an island built of the correct pronunciation of Chorizo
But I’m vegan now so I buy the expensive soy kind from Trader Joe’s

.

On a dating app,
A Black man from somewhere else breaks the ice
“FINALLY! It’s so lovely to meet you. Really, it is just such a lovely thing to know you. Wow. Hello. I can never find POC around here!”

I explain to him I am an imposter.

He is a very sweet man, touches my cheek
“We are people of the sun, and we are beautiful”

I only remember this moment when I am too high.
Is this feeling guilt, or fragility?

.

After an exhausting holiday season,
I sit in front of my expensive laptop reading an email,
But in my mind I am in the heart of downtown LA in 1989


He must have run from the top of the tower of LA fitness on his last day of
Working for The Man in an impressive office
Making good money
Having something to show for himself

A flurry of gray suits and flying papers
Anything for a chance to meet The Greatest

When Muhammad Ali met my Brown father
And saw the photograph freshly removed from it’s frame
Of a young Black man sitting upon a jewel encrusted throne
Eyes fixed to the future somewhere

When he tells the story, he says that Ali smiled
Exhaled a chuckle  
“Well, I’ll be dammed. Is that me?”

My Brown father keeps this treasure away somewhere safe
So he can look upon it
While he sits at home in his White neighborhood
With White carpet
That he will always walk on with his shoes.
.
I like to think he feels powerful, my Brown father,
When he sees a king that reminds him of himself.
Someone who learned how to channel all of his rage
And never lose his affinity for butterflies

The email reads:

Howdy,
I don’t remember if I have sent this to you. Regardless, you should save this interview. I know that Ali was the "Greatest", even though I didn't like everything he did or said.  Much like John Lennon. Told it like it is, both of them! These two are iconic. I am extremely happy to have had these two in my life. I hope you enjoy

Peace, Love,
Dad

Attached, he includes a video of a television interview recorded in the year 1971.

“Why is everything White?”

“Do we go to heaven, too?”

.
I’m walking through my grandmother’s neighborhood deep in East LA.
A concrete safari
Where safety looks like pointy steel bars across every window.

This is the street my Brown father was caught playing with cherry bombs
And then beaten.

The rose bushes in the back yard have lived here for decades.
If they could eat, they would have been fed handmade tortillas up until the day they started to sell the pre-made ones in the store.

Grandpa, why do we call her Grandma Melon?
Because when I ask to kiss her, she says ‘Oh, honey do!’
It’s quite the crowd pleaser, everyone laughs because we came here to get along

But I like her real name so in my mind I call her Magdalena.

In this neighborhood, Tia Rita, Tia Lola, and Grandma like to go to bingo together
And get their hair done
And watch old westerns where the White man always saves the girl in the end.

Later we will go to Omana’s in Pomona where my cousin Jason swears that one day he found a human knuckle in his carnitas.

Half of us believe him, but we order another round anyways because we know it’s the best taqueria this side of the 10.

Just up the road is a building where young Brown men go to enlist
So they might escape neighborhoods with so many cracked walls.

My Brown father was sent to Texas
Looked White men straight in their red, swollen faces
“You ain’t White, you ain’t right boy”
But that was a long time ago.

After lunch, he reminds me why he left this place
“The traffic is *******, the noise”
Besides, nothing quells violence inside of us quite like the trees and rivers back home.


But, Dad, I am White, right?

.

When I see my White mother my heart swells with love.

Who taught her to laugh like that?
With all of her teeth and joy

She wishes she knew how to give me a quinceanera
or what to do with my unruly hair.

Neither of us know, really, so every Christmas she buys me something to burn my hair into submission.

I stopped using them a few years ago, now
But they have a forever home in the back of my linen closet
Just in case

When my Brown father tells me he sees a goodness in her
I taste each homemade birthday cake
And agree

In my Brown father’s mind he is “protector”
After all, what more could he have given me than an easier life?

.

It’s Sunday morning in the year 2002.
Dad made us eggs and hot dogs and perfect toast

Our house is always filled with music

When no-one is around to see
He will sit in his chair
Listen to John Lennon

He will tell me that no man is perfect
But that all you need is love

It always makes me laugh

I see my father in everyone.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
In my mind a glorious battle:
Cosmic, hidden, holy

But my daily life is oh! so boring
I only eat holy frijoles!
Qualyxian Quest Feb 2021
dos tacos vegetarianos
   yo quietly sitting



Goooooooaaaaaaaaaaal!
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
To me, being Messianic is good
I still am mad to be saved
And mad to live in a neighborhood
For the bold, the broken, the brave

Twilight is almost here
I wander quite solitary
Toledo's taqueria
The Guadalupe green clad Mary

I like scifi movies
London 2039
Stephen King, Hey 19
Alex a friend of mine

With him I drink the Wine.
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2021
An any old kinda day
Kind that comes and slips away

Harry still in my mind
I too have brothers. Fathers find.

Oranges today and taqueria
How are you? Nice to seeya

Tomorrow Thai and Italy
Mother Mary: Let it be!
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
Ishmael and Afghanistan
Melville right once more

Mr. Poe in my classroom
Curious forgotten lore

Toledo's taqueria
UNC bookstore

Loneliness unbroken
Verona, not Elsinore

          10:24
Qualyxian Quest Jul 2021
The Wind Cries Mary
Jimi '67
Stockholm in the summer
Narrow little streets

The Wind Cries Mary
Jimi in Seattle
Bipolar on the ferry boats
No shoes upon my feet

The Wind Cries Mary
I listen, Carolina
Chapel of the Cross
Silence. No deceipt

The Wind Whispers Mary
Toledo's Taqueria
Guadalupe green
Mucho gusto when we meet

No surrender. No retreat.
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
I don't go much to Mass anymore
But I do pray to the Celtic Cross

It's at an Episcopal church
Sleeping deer, flowers and moss

The taqueria has Maria
I sit and eat my snacks

I too am a guerilla
I too word attacks

            Green!
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
Nightfall on anxiety
Scene of the attack

For brothers both
For my Uncle Jack

Warrior Poet know it
But the Empire still strikes back

Toledo's taqueria
My little cell phone black

                Tacos!
Qualyxian Quest Mar 2021
the grey sky outside
is grey sky in my soul

drizzle through my mind
solitude console

afternoon depression
midnight's broken toll

confusion and confession
taqueria: Gooooooooooaaaaal!
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
I think she has it now
The ball is in her court

I shoot hoops at night
Saw Europa Report

Toledo's taqueria
Carolina Inn

Expect the Unexpected
But when will it begin?

             Satellite!
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2021
10:37
Sick and suffering true

Postcards today
Arizona who

Also DC
Maybe one or two

Then rest y taqueria
Grey day not blue

      September slew
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2021
Poetry in sickness
Poetry in health
I'd like to be a poem
Beauty more than wealth

Time is not a line
Though we do come to an end
I reach out to Alex
I hope we touch, my friend

Kamakura Buddha
Seattle cedarsnow
Cousins in Vancouver
Books in Toronto

I read of Mexico City
Toledo's taqueria
Boring daily life
Better be than see ya

               rest
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
I'm going to need the church
But now I pray the Celtic Cross

Life is Suffering
Decline, despair, and loss

Toledo's taqueria
Ordinary Mary

Always nice to see ya
I pray for Chapin (Harry)

                Circle!
Qualyxian Quest Sep 2021
Again the nightly darkness
Me at 52
Am I late along?
Ever ancient, Ever new

I read theology
Didn't often do
Father Greeley freely
I do remember you

Travel was a gift
Beauty Baltic Sea
Kyoto Shinkansen
Rieko's sight for me

Toledo's taqueria
Carolina blue
Stockholm sweetly sunlight
Love from me to you

           Es verdad. It's true.
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
The priest said life can come from death
The people sang Spanish songs

When anxiety attacks I find my breath
Move along now. Move along.

Read a couple books about Mexico
But never been myself

Mr. Vasconcelos did Pythagoras know
Richard Rodriguez on my shelf

Toledo's taqueria
Will Ferrell's elf

Salud. To your health!
Qualyxian Quest Apr 2021
Toledo's taqueria
Twice I eat today

I once ate won ton soup
When we were in Taipei

Very ordinary
April now then May

If I ever go to Houston
Watch and pray! Watch and pray!
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2020
Jarritos at the taqueria
Guadalupe green: it happens again.
                    7:37
Qualyxian Quest Aug 2021
......Toledo's taqueria......
Thinking about their past
            Tecumseh!

— The End —