Growing Up Brown And Unblessed

What La Virgen de Guadalupe
was doing under the waterfall, I don’t know.

My brothers ran off
into the vast distance.

Someone was burning tires,
sending a thick black smoke

in the direction of happy drug dealers.
A nine and ten year old

were smoking dope with their mother.
The elementary school

was turning out beautiful dropouts.
Cops gathered around the waterfall.

I was in handcuffs,
no one’s supposed to go

underneath the goddamn waterfall they said.
I was dripping wet

when they threw me into the jail cell
with the lanky prostitutes

who were so impressed
with my deadly young eyes

and my brown legs protruding like genitals
from my short pants.