BIO
Brandon-Bruce Crispin was born in The Bronx, New York City, and spent his childhood between the big city's inner city and the barrios of Santo Domingo, capital de La República Dominicana. He is currently a senior at New York University's Gallatin School of Individualized Study, concentrating in Politics & Narratives with a minor in Creative Writing.
Sun, Moon, Bodéga
From the window came the red die
gleaming and mouthed-off, wide
like a vicioso striking ground, his tired bottle held
to another brown-bagged day spent yelling coño!
while reaching into empty pockets for fleeting bills
and sweat. Luck ignored their pleas
as do las Doñas
done up in hair-rollers, dressed in pastel
as they hustled, were hustled and kept
thoughts vouchered into fistfuls:
more days, more children at hand—not at home
but wandering, tugged on all directions
by hot shiftings in the loud night. Old boys
street-struck at the corner
its habits for charlatáns trapped in myth
watched through windows rusted from grip and
narrated best by the concert of the Bodéga:
güiras shaking, tamboras being hit
songs of long-lost loves
giving out under radio waves