CHOTA
Here I lie, embraced by the miasmic draft
of side-street America;
a voice cuts into the still air.
A police officer stands above me
and the gum stains on Seventh Street.
Chota.
Soon I sit battered, humiliated,
in the dankness of a jail cell;
officers wallow around
contemplating my "suicide."
But this time
they will have to kill me.
Each time a fist smashes
across my belly, pummels my face,
I reach out
to the cries of the curb,
the ballads out of broken brick,
and the smoky outline of a woman's face
burned onto a cell wall.
They will have to kill me!
--Luis J. Rodriguez
From The Concrete River,
Curbstone Press, 1991