In downtown
there is a place
where movement gives birth
to a new pair of eyes.
A place
where our feet
are the scratching sound
of talking wombs.

Here,
voices are born
with every sizzle
and crack
of huaraches being cooked on a plancha
fusing together,
with the smell of pupusas
being slapped,
and tossed into the sunlight.

In this place
borders break down to language and flame,
smiles begin singing,
birds being sold on the corner begin chirping,
and everything that moves
turns into the aching feet
of history’s trembling veins.

Hanging from the ceiling,
outside one of the stores
is a piñata of El Chavo.
His eyes, guiding mine
his spirit gently saying:
“Al otro lado de la calle estan mis amigos
y pues, nosotros no tenemos nada para comer.”
“On the other side of the street are my friends,
and we don’t have anything to eat.”

As I take a look across the street,
I see a black brother throwing punches into the air,
fighting his own shadow,
trying to control the itch,
that comes with knowing,
there is something inside these scarred, brown, and yellow

urinated walls;
There is something
beneath the cracked
busted jaws of broken dreams
breathing inside the pavement
hunting him down!
hunting us down!
Shutting our intuition, our voices,
and penetrating the skin of our people,
that just can’t stop the itch.

On the floor, leaning against a dirty gray wall,
I see my pops, when he first got to this country;
Homeless, full of anger,
and too proud to ask anyone for help.
In the midst of all the people
I feel the power of our grandmothers’ recipes,
crackling, and ripping open the imagination
of a child that follows me into my manhood,
that follows me into the pathways of compassion,
pushing, and pushing, until I too can feel,
that there is something in the shadows
that is hunting us all.

Until I too can feel the disparity in my pop’s broken spirit
and swollen eyes,
while leaning over,
and giving him some change.

In the madness, of all the movement there is victory,
speaking through El Chavo,
speaking in the call of withdrawal that makes us family,
whispering in the city that turns disparity into clarity
right here!
En el grito
del distrito
de piñatas.