BIO
Juan Alvarado was born and raised in Pacoima, California. He has appeared in the Northridge Review, Chaparral (an online literary magazine based in Southern California), got honorable mention for the Rachel Wood award, and has won the Academy of American Poets prize for his poem “Pacoima Corrido.” You can usually find him near Macumba's, biking around Los Angeles, or doing workshops at the House of Brews. He is currently working on his first collection of poetry.
Beneath Me
I look at the gash
on his face;
he’s an old pirate
map with a line
leading to the X
& when I open
it, all I see
is a letter.
To be a man,
sometimes you have to eat
memories like Eucharist.
A stream of words
wants to be understood
from his mouth,
like dreams
my son Benito
drew on pink
construction paper:
grey soldier hugging
a rainbow-skin kid.
Feelings betray
the real enemy.
His open hands
look as if they are
waiting to get a letter that
was lost in the millions
that move in this
world, each telling a story,
waiting for the words
that were witnesses
to why mom left him.
Once I asked what he wanted to be.
When he was young
and all he did was show
me his back hands
in Old English. Right
hand: chance smiles,
left: time cries.
I didn’t whine, I just said how
do I become a man?
My uncles took me
for a ride on my twelfth
birthday to Angel’s mountains.
We got off at a cliff
and opened the trunk.
Dad would always
talk to Benito,
tell him jokes,
carry him on his back like
a drunken turtle. There was a wall
near his house with a painting
of Angels National Mountains
that he would feel
with his hands
like a man touching
his face
for the first time.
Uncle Kiko put a machete
in my right hand. Uncle Willy
opened the trunk.
“Ready?”
I let go of him and wait
outside.
The mailman
puts a letter in the
mailbox and moves along.