Marc Kelly Smith: “When people ask me, ‘Well what makes Chicago style different?’ I say, ‘It’s genuine.’ Because, like the show, your bullshit gets you just so far and then somebody’s going to call you on it in Chicago. It’s always been that way.” (web)
Thadra Sheridan: “I have written poetry since I was eight years old. It rhymed back then. As I moved into adolescence it got really sappy and boy-centric. In college I saw a folk singer at the Winnipeg Folk Festival. His lyrics were funny and blunt and so brutally honest, I was amazed that he said such things out loud. The impression he made on me was incredibly strong. I thought, I could be that honest. I want to affect people that deeply. I write because I believe none of us are alone or all that different. And when we see ourselves in the thoughts and experiences of others, we realize that. So I tell my story.” (web)
“The Whole Chalupa” by Jack McCarthyPosted by Rattle
Jack McCarthy
THE WHOLE CHALUPA
There’s an educational controversy raging in Massachusetts over the “MCAS” tests, a series of standardized tests that students have to pass before they can get a high school diploma.
So I’m on my way to work, jumping around the AM dial,
trying to get last night’s Red Sox score from the west coast
and I hear these two guys talking about
the Drop the Chalupa commercial,
and I stop and listen because I think
it’s one of the funniest commercials I’ve ever seen,
but that’s not what these hockeypucks are saying,
no, they’re complaining about that commercial,
because they don’t get it;
and even before I can hit the scan button again,
Beavis and Buttahan are on to capital punishment,
and why am I not surprised that they’re in favor of it?
But I am surprised that they have the cojones
to express an opinion on it
right after they’ve just admitted
they don’t get Drop the Chalupa.
But isn’t that typical of us right now?
We live in the Golden Age of the Opinion:
no knowledge, no education, no qualification,
just give us your opinion, like …
like a judge in a poetry slam.
And even though I like that commercial,
don’t get the idea that I’m in favor of advertising:
the other day I was waiting for the subway
and there’s this kid on the platform next to me
wearing a GAP sweatshirt, and I said,
“How much you get for that?” and he said, “What?”
I said, “I’m not proud, money’s a little tight right now,
paying off all those college loans and such,
we could use a few extra bucks;
so how much do you charge the GAP
for wearing their advertising like that?”
And he started to move away from me
down the platform. I yelled, “I got
just one word for you, kid: MCAS,”
and he started to run, and all the kids on the platform
started to run away from me as I stood there
shouting “MCAS! MCAS.” Which set me thinking
that if I’d stayed with the Drop the Chalupa guys
five more minutes they probably would have been
ranting and raving about the schools and the
teachers and Why can’t kids pass the MCAS?
Maybe they can’t, you Twin Peaks of Nincompoop,
but I guarantee you, they get Drop the Chalupa.
So why can’t kids pass the MCAS?
Because they don’t do any homework.
Why? Because they’re all out working at
Taco Bell. Why? Because they’ve become
the hottest market for all the advertisers;
because they have to shell out
forty-eight bucks for a GAP sweatshirt,
eighteen ninety-eight for the new Britney Spears CD.
I bought Don’t Be Cruel for eighty-nine cents;
Hallelujah I Love Her So, Ray Charles,
changed my life, eighty-nine cents;
Mack the Knife, the Louis Armstrong version—
I laid a crumpled dollar down, they gave me back
a penny and a dime (and they didn’t need a calculator
to do it). These kids have to buy the whole CD,
and they have to work half a day for that.
Studying pays nada, and they’re consumers now.
They know it; we’re the ones who haven’t
gotten around to admitting it yet. Now
you’re going to tell me they don’t have to
listen to the ads, and you’re right, except for
one thing: advertising works. Every so often
the stakes get high enough to compel us
to acknowledge that it works; we took
liquor commercials off TV, and cigarettes;
we force them to put in disclaimers: “Please
chugalug responsibly;” “May cause drowsiness,
anal leakage, and agonizing death;”
“Erections lasting more than four hours, though rare,
require immediate medical attention.” I wish
somebody had told me that a long time ago.
It would have explained so much.
What we really need is a disclaimer that says,
“I got paid big bucks to tell you that about Doritos.
If you believe one word I said, you’d be safer going to
Hannibal Lecter’s for an intimate dinner than you are
watching TV, because the advertisers will eat you
alive.” Even that might not be enough; we’ve made
TV the babysitter for two generations of our kids;
now we find out that was like putting Dubya
in charge of the evidence in a coke bust.
And no one understands the power of advertising
better than the politicians, who gave away the airwaves
in the first place; now it’s poetic justice that they have to
sell their soul every few years to buy their office back.
Jack McCarthy: “I write poetry because in 1964 I heard ‘A Child’s Christmas in Wales.’ I perform my poetry because in 1993-94 I found out that there was an audience for what I was writing, and that I loved being in front of that audience. (And I really love it when the people who introduce me use the word ‘legend.’) I compete in slams because it’s a chance to do two or three poems instead of just one; and because whenever someone tells me they liked my poem, I burn to ask, ‘How much did you like it? On a scale of one to ten???’” (web)
Taylor Mali: “I was a teacher for nine years, until 2000, when I decided to quit my job to see if I could make a living as a poet. Miraculously, I have managed to do so through the college lecture circuit and international teaching conferences. Even bought a house in the Berkshires with my wife where I am sitting now on a cold day in January watching the birds come one by one to the feeder which I filled yesterday.” (web)
I never admired how you grew into thick, resilient strands black as India ink: I used to bleach you so frail or shave you clean under the harsh summer sun. Once in high school I didn’t wash you for ten straight weeks because I thought it would’ve been so cool to be the only Chinese kid in Chicago with dreadlocks. When you started to recede, my worries flew up the Lau family history of hair, recalling grandpa’s pattern baldness, how mom’s whole head turned white like a curtain of ivory needles before she was twenty, and how Uncle Etienne nicknamed Dad Silvermane for the bolt of white streaking across the back of his head, which he always boasted was a sign of his brilliance.
ii.
Though I knew one day I’d have to say goodbye to you, I pictured you slowly retreating over decades like a wounded beach, never thought I’d see you vanish completely in the flashfires of chemotherapy. After the first week, I stood in the bathtub pulling out tiny clumps of you like unraveling the string my head was stitched from. Wiping off half an eyebrow was like holding a handful of bloody teeth, wiping off the other half like looking back at the car crash wondering if I really survived it. It never was the foreshadowing x-rays, or negative blood tests, or sinister words like malignant that broke me. It was when I saw you blanketing my bathroom floor like bodies strewn across a battlefield that I thought If I am to be devoured, then please, God, Night, Mouth in the Darkness, swallow me faster than one hair at a time.
iii.
I would like you to know that every day, I would still shampoo my naked scalp out of habit in memorial for your shortened life; my fingers would pay respects to a thousand of your gravestones every morning. Maybe this was my ritual to call you back: on my knees, white as the sheet I feared they’d lay over me, an atheist praying for regeneration in cupfuls of hair. How many nights did I run my finger along the rim of my head searching for your return? How many deserts did I cross in my mind?
iv.
Years after, I still catch myself carelessly running my fingers through your nest to see if you’ve held against the wind, promise to never shave you clean, remembering every comb that resembled a baptism. Your patchwork emergence was a flight of blackbirds returning home in the spring; I tattooed a black star on my wrist to remind myself of the beauty of what was barren and reclaimed. I am sorry for never appreciating how stoically you fit to my scalp or how neatly you’d tuck under a baseball cap. Penance comes with every instance my heart surrenders to the commonplace, like how I imagine every brush as silver-plated, think of donating hair for wigs as acts of extraordinary mercy, fall in love with Rogaine commercials, melt when my girl runs her fingers over your tips like grass, break down when I catch your reflection in the mirror and can’t help but mouth the words Welcome Back.
their high school principal
told me I couldn’t teach
poetry with profanity
so I asked my students,
“Raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Holocaust.”
in unison, their arms rose up like poisonous gas
then straightened out like an SS infantry
“Okay. Please put your hands down.
Now raise your hand if you’ve heard of the Rwandan genocide.”
blank stares mixed with curious ignorance
a quivering hand out of the crowd
half-way raised, like a lone survivor
struggling to stand up in Kigali
“Luz, are you sure about that?”
“No.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Carlos—what’s genocide?”
they won’t let you hear the truth at school
if that person says “fuck”
can’t even talk about “fuck”
even though a third of your senior class
is pregnant.
I can’t teach an 18-year-old girl in a public school
how to use a condom that will save her life
and that of the orphan she will be forced
to give to the foster care system—
“Carlos, how many 13-year-olds do you know that are HIV-positive?”
“Honestly, none. But I do visit a shelter every Monday and talk with
six 12-year-old girls with diagnosed AIDS.”
while 4th graders three blocks away give little boys blowjobs during recess
I met an 11-year-old gang member in the Bronx who carries
a semi-automatic weapon to study hall so he can make it home
and you want me to censor my language
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
your books leave out Emmett Till and Medgar Evers
call themselves “World History” and don’t mention
King Leopold or diamond mines
call themselves “Politics in the Modern World”
and don’t mention Apartheid
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
you wonder why children hide in adult bodies
lie under light-color-eyed contact lenses
learn to fetishize the size of their asses
and simultaneously hate their lips
my students thought Che Guevara was a rapper
from East Harlem
still think my Mumia t-shirt is of Bob Marley
how can literacy not include Phillis Wheatley?
schools were built in the shadows of ghosts
filtered through incest and grinding teeth
molded under veils of extravagant ritual
“Carlos, what’s genocide?”
“Roselyn, how old was she? Cuántos años tuvo tu madre cuando se murió?”
“My mother had 32 years when she died. Ella era bellísima.”
…what’s genocide?
they’ve moved from sterilizing “Boriqua” women
injecting indigenous sisters with Hepatitis B,
now they just kill mothers with silent poison
stain their loyalty and love into veins and suffocate them
…what’s genocide?
Ridwan’s father hung himself
in the box because he thought his son
was ashamed of him
…what’s genocide?
Maureen’s mother gave her
skin lightening cream
the day before she started the 6th grade
…what’s genocide?
she carves straight lines into her
beautiful brown thighs so she can remember
what it feels like to heal