Kingsbury Street Blues

Artemio sucked at pinball
in the pre-Chicano days
of Kingsbury Street

where one of the Nieto twins
was killed by a car,
where Artemio courted

one of their sisters.
Her musk still present
in his nostrils.

These decadent years later
Artemio hears that
she has died of cancer,

died young like her mother.
Heartbreak does not heal heartbreak,
and now even Kingsbury Street has died,

except for the chicken feathers
which escape the Tyson chicken plant
and float to the local college.

Oh, God, for such an education
to finally solve the riddle.
What came first, the chicken or the egg?