Blessed Be The Truth-Tellers

                   For Jack Agüeros

In the projects of Brooklyn, everyone lied.

My mother used to say:

If somebody starts a fight,

just walk away.

Then somebody would smack

the back of my head

and dance around me in a circle, laughing.

When I was twelve, pus bubbled

on my tonsils, and everyone said:

After the operation, you can have

all the ice cream you want.

I bragged about the deal;

no longer would I chase the ice cream truck

down the street, panting at the bells

to catch Johnny the ice cream man,

who allegedly sold heroin the color of vanilla

from the same window.

Then Jack the Truth-Teller visited the projects,

Jack who herded real camels and sheep

through the snow of East Harlem every Three Kings’ Day,

Jack who wrote sonnets of the jail cell

and the racetrack and the boxing ring,

Jack who crossed his arms in a hunger strike

until the mayor hired more Puerto Ricans.

And Jack said:

You gonna get your tonsils out?

Ay bendito cuchifrito Puerto Rico.

That’s gonna hurt.

I was etherized,

then woke up on the ward

heaving black water onto white sheets.

A man poking through his hospital gown

leaned over me and sneered:

You think you got it tough? Look at this!

and showed me the cauliflower tumor

behind his ear. I heaved up black water again.

The ice cream burned.

Vanilla was a snowball spiked with bits of glass.

My throat was red as a tunnel on fire

after the head-on collision of two gasoline trucks.

This is how I learned to trust

the poets and shepherds of East Harlem.

Blessed be the Truth-Tellers,

for they shall have all the ice cream they want.

From The Trouble Ball