Hustle. David Tomas Martinez

      

      © 2014 by David Tomas Martinez

      FIRST EDITION

      All rights reserved.

      No part of this book may be reproduced without written permission of the publisher. Please direct inquiries to:

      Managing Editor

      Sarabande Books, Inc.

      2234 Dundee Road, Suite 200

      Louisville, KY 40205

       Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Martinez, David Tomas, 1976–

       [Poems. Selections]

       HUSTLE : Poems / David Tomas Martinez.—First Edition.

      pages cm

       Includes bibliographical references and index.

       ISBN 978-1-936747-86-3

       I. Title.

       PS3613.A786424H87 2014

       811'.6—dc23

      2013031026

      Cover art: Tattoo design by Brian Romero.

      Cover and interior layout by Kirkby Gann Tittle.

      This book is printed on acid-free paper.

      Sarabande Books is a nonprofit literary organization.

	This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts.
	The Kentucky Arts Council, the state arts agency, supports Sarabande Books with state tax dollars and federal funding from the National Endowment for the Arts.

       For Glover, Sandra, and Tony

       For Brittney

      CONTENTS

On Palomar Mountain

I.

Calaveras

       II.

       To The Young

       Shed

       Sabbath Fe Minus

       California Penal Code 266

       In Chicano Park

       The Only Mexican

       Innominatus

       III.

       Motion and Rest

       Small Discoveries

       The Sofa King

       Apotropaic

       The Cost of it All

       Rebecca’s Use

       Coveralls

       IV.

       Forgetting Willie James Jones

       Of Mockingbirds

       Scientifically Speaking

       This Bird Chest Holds a Bird’s Heart

       They Say I Teach English, I Say

       A Sunday March

       The Mechanics of Men

       Notes

       Acknowledgments

       The Author

ON PALOMAR MOUNTAIN

      The dark peoples with things:

      for keys, coins, pencils

      and pens our pockets grieve.

      No street lights or signs,

      no liquor stores or bars,

      only a lighter for a flashlight,

      and the same-faced trees,

      similar-armed stones

      and crooked bushes

      staring back at me.

      There is no path in the woods for a boy from the city.

      I would have set fire to get off this wilderness

      but Palomar is no El Camino in an empty lot,

      the plastic dripping from the dash

      and the paint bubbling like a toad’s throat.

      If mountains were old pieces of furniture,

      I would have lit the fabric and danced.

      If mountains were abandoned crack houses,

      I would have opened their meanings with flame,

      if that would have let the wind and trees lead my eyes

      or shown me the moon’s tip-toe on the moss—

      as you effect my hand,

      as we walk into the side of a Sunday night.

I

CALAVERAS

       1.

      A car wants to be stolen,

      as the night desires to be revved,

      will leave a door unlocked,

      a key in the wheel well

      or designedly dropped from a visor.

      A window will always wink,

      to be broken by bits of spark plug

      or jimmied down the glass.

      This is mine.

      Where is the window to break

      in your life?

      In a backyard off the 94, I demonstrate on the moon

      how a dent pulled ignition and a toothbrush for a turned key

      easily swoon the inner workings of a Ford.

      Push the dent puller in,

      turn the triangle, burrow the screw,

      and metallic light falls in twirled shavings.

      Before I snap the weight I say

      nobody gets caught with this,

      not because this is a felony,

      we speak of prison inevitably,

      as likely as sweeps and raids,

      as common as falling.

      Prison, for us,

      taxes and deaths.

      Nobody