The Lower East Side
The mere mention of Daniel Santos
has occupied a place in its history
like the blow of a heavy nail,
his songs, cupped hands, which one
carried to a communion or to the party
on Saturday night, were not always
the best thing for protection: which
shows you that no song is bulletproof,
no song escapes the burns that Death's
touch afflicts you with.
Add the neon,
the neon that follows you whole, violent,
and steady, to convince you that there is
madness on the streets; the madness
everyone carries in their eyes when they
walk past a man beating up a woman,
and say nothing, as the tip of the foot
repeatedly enters the lowered eyes through a
fast walk that takes one further and fur-
ther away from this commercial interruption.
But I too have been folded into shape
by the very same dull iron, its memory
holding nothing but the wrinkled faces
of dead men and women. Sometimes
when I have to get away, when I have
to go off and hide somewhere, I
enter the movie theatre off St. Mark's
Place. There my eyes focus themselves
on a pleasant film, while unemployed
Blacks and Puertoricans smoke marijuana
the smoke rises to the ceiling and the
whole theatre looks like a dream being
cooked under glass.
