Rachel McKibbens

814 S. Hesperian Street

It was the one place we were forbidden to ride our bikes:

the alley behind the liquor store, where our cousin had

his own bike stolen from him at knife point, forced to walk

the carpet of shattered glass, tied-off condoms and shot gun shells.

Graffiti sprayed over every garage door, the alley was a ghetto urinal,

filled with the territorial pissings of misspelled death threats

made by junior high drop-outs. 

Two of our uncles were in rival gangs. Vinnie claimed F-Troop,

Phillip repped Delhi. The stories they’d tell about the alleyway

dug through our hearts like dirtied miners, holding excavated chunks

in their ravaged hands. Jimmy Turnball, on angel dust, raped a dog

with his bare foot. Jose Alvarez’ body was found naked,

by his own mother, with someone’s penis sewn into his mouth. 

To get to the liquor store without cutting through the alley

meant riding around the entire 800 block with our backs

to the notoriously unhinged traffic of unlicensed immigrants

tearing through Bristol street.

It was summertime. I was ten, my brother, eight—

grown-ups in the latchkey underground. The milk money

left on the table was enough for four candy bars, two packs

of gum and a soda. We swore not to tell on each other

then sped down the alley, working our bikes through

a makeshift shrine to vato locos, dodging a balding pit bull

yanked back by its chain. We had almost reached

the end when a familiar smell hit the brakes.

I saw it first, tucked between a beat up car and garbage cans.

The definite hand, covered in ants. Blood snaked down

the driveway, work shirt nearly blown off, the thick buzz

of corpse flies working the holes. We stood over this man,

grateful we couldn’t see his face.  His namelessness

the only protection we had.

It wasn’t a sadness I had known before—the weight

of this discovery drilling through my body, the immediacy

of death sprawled at my feet. We turned our bikes around

and went home, suddenly luckier to be alive, to feel

the afternoon sun biting through our shoulders,

to hear the siren of birds, screeching in unison.

Rachel McKibbens is a Brooklyn-based writer who is co-curator for the louderARTS Project reading series. She is a 2007 New York Foundation of the Arts poetry fellow and a 2007 Pushcart nominee.