TODO BUENO?

by Andrés Castro

from Macmillan

New York City continues to grow and grate on me.
     Being born at Coney Island Hospital the summer of ’58, 

     after my family arrived from Puerto Rico—Borikén 

to the Indigenous—should make me a Boricua, but no.

Mi familia on the island often says I am from Por Allá, 

     especially those claiming bloodlines to native villages—

     chiefs rabid in their gatekeeping—when calling 
the post-Columbian colonizing label, Taino, inauthentic. 

My genté, speaking from por alla/my over here—

     just call me Nuyorican. My ancestral archipelago remains

a natural wonder; but why erase my mainland city tribe. 
     My adolescence was blessed with a South Bronx block 

of modest homes owned by Black, brown, and white 

families that mixed—no matter the surrounding chaos 

of the sixties. My transplanted island roots took root 
above and below concrete. So what I was born too late 

to be an OG Nuyorican—say The Young Lords or outlaw

poets Pedro Pietri, Miguel Algarín, and Miguel Piñero, who

founded the Nuyorican Poets’ Café to welcome everyone. You
can’t grow up where I did and not be Nuyorican—this one, 

given my nature, still needs activism and revolutionary poetry.  

     The stakes are too high now: the world is being set ablaze 

with the U.S. the head arsonist—aren’t the U.S. bombs that made 

Gaza a wasteland and suddenly dropped on Iran enough proof? 

     I only wish my roots were not drying out so quickly. My mother

would say, “Cuídate, de los buenos quedan pocos,” if still alive.

I have gone from little boy to brittle—taking care and being good 

in 2025 is old as analog. The robotic other side is evil and reckless—

signing the Doomsday Clock will strike midnight in my lifetime—
whether I practice Yucayeque rituals in Borikén’s central mountains 

or rattle downtown on the Lexington Ave express. What I really

need to talk about is the genocide of Palestinians given the chance.  

Andrés Castro, a PEN member, is listed in Poets & Writers Directory and keeps a personal blog,
The Practicing Poet. Andrés is currently working on Militant Humanist, a project for poets, 
writers, artists, and others.

THE FISH WAS BORN ON FRIDAY

by Clara B. Jones

Prospect Park tunnel by TurnoftheSue

I am Mexican, but my immigration status is none of your business. I am no rapist or murderer, but Donald Trump has my ticket. It was easy to cross the border at El Alberto. Even the patrol looked the other way. I hitched rides to Newark where my cousin, César, picked me up. He worked in a fancy restaurant in Brooklyn, washing dishes and, sometimes, peeling spuds. His best friend was an Irish guy nicknamed, The Fish, by his father because he was born on Friday. From the beginning, The Fish treated me like shit and told César I was only good for taking bags from the South Bronx to Harlem, the closer to 42nd Street the better. I didn't mind carrying cocaine, but one day the pack was heavier than usual, and I figured it must be a piece. The Fish fooled me; but, not for long. I called César and told him to meet me in the Prospect Park tunnel ahora mismo, and he showed up an hour later with The Fish at his side. When I pulled out the gun, The Fish yelled, “Stupid Spic!”, and lunged at my chest. It happened so fast, I didn't know what to do. But, as I was running away from the cops, I could see they left César's cap in the street.


Clara B. Jones is a retired scientist, currently practicing poetry in Asheville, NC. As a woman of color, she writes about social relations and the moral dimensions of power. Erbacce, CHEST, Ofi Literary Magazine, Transnational, PANK, and 34th Parallel are among the venues her poems and reviews have appeared or are forthcoming in, and she is the author of the weblog, Ferguson and Other Poems About Race: A Chapbook (2015). In the 1970s, Clara studied with Adrienne Rich and, more recently, with the poets Meghan Sterling and Eric Steineger.