“Are you a doctor?” The voice hangs in the air, speaks twice, before I realize that it is addressing me. The words come from a woman who has just squeezed in beside me on the concrete bench fixed to the subway platform. Many pounds overweight, hair crayon-yellow and frizzed beyond combing, she eyes my white pants and shoes, her eyes rimmed round with blue pencil like a …
Our bodies are continuations of maps places we've slept in become sad in made love in everything that's been through us an alternate geography sites of fevered reunions of irreconcilable arpeggios —On these rain-darkened floors, magpies In the music room our notes like water down a sink drain tunnel back into the piano …
This interview took place on September 30th, 2020. Piñata Theory by Alan Chazaro won the 2018 Hudson Prize and is available through Black Lawrence Press. Alan is also the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album, an adjunct professor at the University of San Francisco, a columnist at Palette Poetry, and raising money for NBA arena workers during Covid-19. We linked up through zoom and kicked off the interview talking about baseball and basketball—their respective playoffs and the …
we’re driving through Northern California headed to the Purim spiel and it’s almost spring. The way spring marches into California makes everything look stupidly beautiful. I’m reading this book called SoundMachine and your sister calls from the east to ask which brand of toilet paper to buy during quarantine. In fact I can’t remember exactly what she is asking because I am too busy trying not to meddle in anyone’s business. Stand 5 or 6 feet away, they say, no shaking hands or hugging. When you …
I woke up to fog this morning. So thick, we couldn’t see the cars from the front door. This wouldn’t be so strange if I were still in San Francisco, but I’m not. The air grew so smokey at the end of August that I was afraid to make the short journey from my rented bedroom to nearby Glen Canyon. The stillness drove me insane. The fact that my shut-tight room was still inundated with the scent of fire and plastic melting against bone did not help. So, I flew back to my parents’ home and my brother …
Suppose these streets were yours, and mine: what would it profit us? I take up my small space, my paltry plot, and clutch the deadbolt on my gate, whispering “Thank God.” I could do much worse than stewing in safety, stirring around my apartment all through daylight and ladling into bed each night. I am not a survivor—I just keep on waking up. Wouldn’t I be mad to invite the out-there into these walls... I can watch you (and me in some other world; body) anytime, taking back these streets for a …