Two Poems
Pretty
We’d say I love you, but not
in a gay way. High school
boys, we’d only touch
through fist
& gorilla chest
affirmation of man-
hood, avoiding the kid
with flamboyant ways like we would
staring at the sun’s flames. Now,
grown, I can look deeper
as two gay men inside
Davies Symphony Hall
burn into each other.
How their flesh
becomes a soundtrack for their truth.
Are they unafraid
when saying I love you?
How they twirl fingers
in each other’s hair
& rub tender neck-
lines like no one else
is alive. It seems orchestral,
boundless, how they merge—
head on shoulder,
hands in lap, lips
slightly apart. Pretty,
is what someone might call it. I say
someone because to say pretty
would be hella gay of me
& since middle school
I’ve been taught to never use
umbrellas when it rains, to never
reach inside your gut
for explanations, to never turn
at angles that might expose you.
Bricks
Near the park where we hoop
on weekends, we park the car
and spark blunts into rotation like
just-born stars orbiting black
and brown fingertips in a ritual
of ash and smoke-dream. We mix
drinks and argue
Steph Curry, women, Wolverine, never
reaching conclusions. When we get bored
we freestyle—I’m in the backseat
of Delande’s Buick when a trap
song comes on and my boys
are hype. They rap fuck bitches
get money as I peel
my layers off, summon Mos Def
over trill, spit rhombus
over rectangle. The cypher
is a loop of infinity and head nods
I never break so bless
the rhythm with intellect
on cue. Halfway through my verse
Kevin turns around and says
Nah, you need to drop
more niggas in that. His durag
and gold chain shine in the moon-
light like beautiful armor.
I do not tell him that the word is
a brick rubbing my tonsils. That I am
more caterpillar than panther.
I do not say that the two syllables carry
oceans in my mouth I cannot hold.
That I have tried it and drowned.
That I am too afraid to crush the darkness
and the light between us.
Alan Chazaro is a public high school teacher pursuing his MFA in Writing at the University of San Francisco. He is the current Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow and a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley. His work has received an AWP Intro Journals Award and appears or is forthcoming in Huizache, The Cortland Review, Borderlands, Iron Horse Review, Juked, decomP, and others.