BIO
Jesús Cortez is an undocumented writer and poet from West Anaheim, California. His work is inspired by his upbringing by a single Guerrerence mother during the 1990’s. Through his works, he hopes to shed light on the people and stories about the city that tend to be ignored by the mainstream. His work has appeared in The Acentos Review, Harvard Palabritas, and Dryland Literary Journal, among other publications.
Lincoln Avenue
I sometimes gaze at the
palm trees,
such a California thing to
do,
cliches and romanticism—
but nobody thinks of
Lincoln Avenue for
postcards
or for poems or tales of
magical realism—
sometimes, I like to forget
about the murmurs of the
dead
and about the pain in
the legs of the women
I would see walking up and
down
or stepping out of the old
bikini bar
or the desperate souls
searching for rooms in
cheap motels
searching for warmth in
the city of the forgotten—
yet, I love Lincoln Avenue,
as the sun hits the palm
trees
and shines for everyone,
as the blessing for those
of us who live in this
purgatory,
where we live and die,
and live through the pain,
with a West Anaheim grin.
Pool Hall Tales
When
Street Fighter 2
arrived
in 1991,
we’d
make lines at the
pool
hall on Westchester Drive—
ten
years old, searching
through
every inch of
apartment
12 for any
quarter
to get my fix—
Summer
of 1992, after
leaving
the purse in an alley,
we
walked into the pool hall,
after
splitting a $20 in four,
we
approached arcade machines
and
pool tables—I played
Street
Fighter 2, until the
quarters
ran out and guilt arrived—
My Mama
would scold Gabriel,
she’d
tell him to at least buy me a soda,
since
I’d follow him to the liquor store,
more
like a pet than a son,
I just
wanted a quarter to be Ryu
and get
lost inside the pool hall,
past
the stench of cigarettes
and Tom
Sawyer in the jukebox—
There
is no pool hall
on
Westchester anymore,
just
dirty glass doors
that
hold old joys.