Tertulia (Penguin Poets) - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Vincent Toro's debut poetry collection, STEREO.ISLAND.MOSAIC., was awarded the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award and the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. He is also a Poet's House Emerging Poets Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, and winner of The Caribbean Writer's Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize and Repertorio Español's Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award. Vincent is a professor at Bronx Community College, is poet in the schools for Dreamyard and the Dodge Poetry Foundation, is writing liaison for The Cooper Union's Saturday Program, and is a contributing editor at Kweli Literary Journal.

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On Battling (Baltimore Strut)

Gray cased in gray, shaken

            and truncated like timber,

            the bleat rouses all provinces,

calling each seed to surface

and insist on a redress. This trumpet

            of grief and homespun placards

            is met with gunmetal treads

bruising the fruit stands, mustard

gas suffocating the night's

            coruscation. As elbows

            lock before storefronts

to shelter shop windows

from the wallop of pitiless

            Kevlar, as flares browbeat

            boulevards and arsenals

are dispatched across the wet

gravel, a single shirtless

            seraph unfurls himself

            upon the tarmac. Flexing

faux leather, he gyrates, feather-

glides, thunderclaps, then jukes

            toward the 16,000-pound

            armored personnel carrier.

The bullying smog flinches

at his voltaic gait, as he peacocks

            into the boomerang hour,

            cranes his neck and shrieks 

to remind the intruder your tanks

are no match for my toprock.

Days of Being Wild (dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 1990)

            (Dissolve)

At the funeral of his birth the seamstresses sing matte-muted adagio

of rouge and torn hems. Oleaginous in both mane and vow. Bronze

king of ennui. She drifts across oxidized hallways. Her dress, the slug

line. Blue filtered lights and non-filtered cigarettes imbibe them.

CUT TO:          Closing credits. Exit. Pressed

            suit preens for role

            as auteur's unsung enigma.

One mistakes soliloquy for an affair. The other lives as an atoll, divot-

headed and bleak-lacquered. Boast-throated, he follows her like

a tracking shot that took the crew three weeks to stage. With days

drenched in despondent night, they mutiny through stasis, resist

CUT TO:          Again, that infernal clock.

            Train car hemorrhaging, roof

            top scaled. An ellipsis.

the throttling of the hours toward shopping carts glutted with ailment.

These railways run parallel but incongruent; one stretches toward

longing, the other hunts for omission. They sleep in the wind of radio

static. She sways for the unthreaded fishhook. He is a desert gawking

CUT TO:          Suitcase. Flower print dress.

            Unrequited knock at brass

            gates. Clock, grief-stricken.

in Dutch tilt at the inebriated street that spurned him. Reviled Coke

bottles. Bedroom slippers under the vanity caught in soft focus. 

Castigated like a dipsomaniacal gumshoe by the blunted edge

of minutes. Triangulated cravings asphyxiate them. Each tantalizes

CUT TO:          Pearl earring gifted to

            the second thief once

            reclaimed from the first.

the other through taciturn tides of withholding. Hell-bent on boring

the sea. But this mise-en-sc�ne does not belong to them. This

is the viewer's Malebolge, a whorl of truancy spliced from B-rolls

of rambunctious prodigals who refuse to catch what they chase.

CUT TO:          Clock. Stairwell in need

            of serenading. Threat posing

            as flirtation. Opening credits.

            (Fade in)

Disco Ballistics

friday nights we prep for hot

skirmishes. take three to five

business days to primp and pick out

duds. shave. apply makeup. contact

all accomplices. hail our platoon.          

then a cab. breach the checkpoint

            with a wink. order a round of shots

            during tactical strike assemblies. stake

            out our first kill of the evening. flanked

            by chaise lounges and black lights.

            the beat drops in syncopation

            with our first village

raid. clink our cosmos like mac clips.

chuck disco ball grenades into middle

schools. flirt bump and grind. spawn

mushroom clouds in unisex bathroom

stalls. flick cigarettes sucked

to the filter onto the casualties

            we create. the styles we pilfer. smack

            lips in the mirror. launch glitter drone

            assassinations. snipe the bartender's

            digits. swipe...