The Red Bandana
(with apologies to Joyce & Williams)
This is a portrait of the cholo as a young man,
lying on his bed, hand under head, bare feet crossed
at the ankles. He’s looking at a black & white
picture she took with her prima at the fair
last year. He’s listening to War’s Greatest Hits
& training his hair with a red paisley bandana.
His friend just got a tattoo, a snarling Bulldog
like an invitation to a bite that won’t ever heal.
He’d get one too, black & gray ink engraving
virgin flesh across his chest, but he’s not sure
what to get. He thinks of getting La Virgencita,
eyes as familiar as his mother’s under a radiant
veil. He thinks of hands clasped in prayer.
A concrete cross. A red, red rose, stem twisted
into a crown of needles. Or an AK-47—
something to believe in. If she asked him,
he’d get her name. Reyna. Tonight, he’ll dream
he’s standing in front of his dead mother’s
mirror, trying on faces before the first day
of 11th grade. She’ll be there in the morning,
bus 20, a freshman in a sundress as lovely
as cempasúchil, orange & yellow & violet,
her smile as bright as the moon above Sky Harbor.
He needs the right look to approach her.
He’s been a skater, a jock, & now he’s a cholo.
Soon he’ll be a tweaker & then a holy roller,
& maybe one day, if God is as good as they say,
a mystic, living with the wife of his youth
far from the city, growing cannabis on ancestral
land, eating wild honey & locusts, composing
apocryphal poetry in varrio calligraphy,
a chronicle of a nation’s delivery from slavery
in Egypt/Babylon/Rome, victory over Death,
the destruction of this World, the coming of the
Next. He’s doesn’t know it yet, but one day
he’ll dance like a madman, twirl like a drunken
dervish to the rhythm of his grandchildren’s
laughter, spinning like a wheel within a wheel
in Ezekiel’s vision. Someday soon, all will
be revealed, but for now through this wormhole
—Behold!—He’s just a wannabe cholo in love
who dreams in orange & yellow & violet
& so much depends upon that picture.
KENNETH CHACÓN (he/him/that vato) is a 6ixth Sun Xicano from Fresno, Califas. He is the author of The Cholo Who Said Nothing & Other Poems (Turning Point 2017) and his work has appeared in Huizache, BorderSenses, The Cimarron Review, Spillway, Blackbird, The Colorado Review, Palette Poetry among others. He is a father of five and grandfather of five and teaches writing at Fresno City College.
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