BIO
Kirk Alvaro Lua’s work has appeared in The Acentos Review, A Sharp Piece of Awesome, Pilgrimage Magazine, and Toyon Literary Magazine. He is from Madera, the Heart of California. He attended Humboldt State University where he earned a BA in English and a Spanish minor. He now attends Fresno State’s MFA Program for Poetry. His first teachers of poetry were his parents. His mother taught him how to write and his father taught him how to say fuck it. He has a cat, and her name is Zucchini.
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1. Gold Teeth
In México at a bar
my grandpa and my Tío Paco
drain caguamas.
Their heads lean back
like pelicans swallowing
fish. They bring down
their bottles to guns
pressed into their guts.
My Tío Paco says
Tranquilo
as he and my grandpa
follow their instructions
and remove their gold rings.
One of them asks my grandpa
¿Por qué tan callado amigo?
My tío answers
Es mudo.
His silence stays even after
my tío orders a tequila
kills it and asks
¿Por qué no dijiste nada?
Por mis dientes de oro.
2. Tía Maga
México es tan corriente.
Que hasta el sonido del dinero
es corriente.
Las monedas Americanas
suenan bonitas
cuando caen al suelo.
El peso suena como
un tepalcate de barro.
3. Maldito Billete
No store in Mexicali will take
a bill that my Tía Virginia has
because it is worn and torn. She asks
Bueno ¿Qué se supone que puedo
hacer con el billete?
She pulls into a gas station
and pumps. When finished
she goes to the attendent
and hands him the cursed bill.
Señora no puedo aceptar esto.
Okay
with a grin
entonces saca el gas.
4. Remate en Ensenada
¿Te gustan los discos? Me pregunto el vendedor.
Sí.
Bueno. El año pasado
vine aquí y estaba mirando
a través de un montón de discos
y encontré dos discos de Barry Manilow.
Recordé haber escuchado algo sobre él
en las noticias que había muerto.
Así que compré ambos por diez pesos.
Cuando llegué a mi casa le dije
a mi hijo que descubriera el valor.
Me dijo
Papá, los discos de Manilow no valen nada.
Barry Manilow no murió.
Salió del clóset.
Todavía tengo los discos.
María Dolores vs García Lorca
I push my abuelita in a wheelchair
down the aisles en la segunda.
I’m not brave enough to call it
her wheelchair.
I find a notebook for $1
flip through it
hope for vacancy.
A couple of pages
written on by a woman. Her pencil
left teeth marks on the page.
Catholic prayers
and she confesses
being choked
by her boyfriend
in front of her kids.
I rip them out
put them in my pocket
and put it back on the shelf.
My abuelita
looks in a photo album
full of a woman’s life.
She looks at them as if she were in them.
She looks up at me
finds me guilty
for something I’d never do.
She closes the album and says
she is ready without words.
She is tired.
We exit and her eyes look up
her head down. She points to el cielo
and says
La luna parece una tortilla de harina.
She points again
to a field of grapevines
as I buckle her in.
Parece una sábana blanca
extendida a través de mi cama
en la luz de la luna.
My abuelita is better than García Lorca
and doesn’t even know it
or who he was.