Lalo Delgado And The Invisible Man

The age demanded
more than a Chicano could give it,
being the invisible man,

a stranger in his own strangeness.
Bogart was on the other side
and imagined Aztec ancestors

were like a mist of algodon---
the very cotton that
Henry’s family picked

row upon row upon row.
Henry’s mother
singing every rhyme in free verse.

The pianola replaces the shineola.
Henry’s Aunt Tola
lived in worn-out Zorn

just before the creek turned Greek.
There was no trace of Samothrace.
If there was, indeed,

an Aztec princess,
it slips Henry’s mind
and Lalo’s vision.