From: lichter@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Michael I. Lichter)
Subject: Juan Felipe Herrera: Revolution Skyscraper
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Sat, 12 Dec 92 08:31:25 GMT

This (rather long) poem was written by Juan Felipe Herrera.
Unfortunately _The Before Columbus Foundation Poetry Anthology_
provides zilcho in the way of bio, so I can't say much about him other
than that he's a Chicano poet who is also a musician and actor, and it
sounds like he's either from or has spent a good deal of time in San
Diego.  I've added some notes at the end to fill in a few of the blanks
you might draw.  The poem is taken from Herrera's book _Facegames_,
published in 1987 by As Is/So & So Press.

By the way, it took me a long time to type this in and write the notes
at the end, so please read it.  I think you'll find it worth your
while.


	Revolution Skyscraper
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				"Let me count the stars inside you 
				 and breathe the air in your mouth"
					- Margarita Luna Robles

	LOOK at me!  I am a tux dressed crew-cut Chicano
	lifting an invisible curtain with my eyebrows.  I walk
	& shuffle down this asphalt album where humans are
	paisley notes stretching by the neon lit fast food
	chiken special signs.  Warm breeze on a Sunday nite.
	Listen to me.  The Japanese are busy finishing with the
	Obon festival on Jackson street selling tickets for the
	two thousand dollar raffle.  The guy calling me to buy
	5 for three dollars reminds me of an old sergeant.
	But, deep inside he's a No-No boy.  He'll never forget
	Manzanar, Tule Lake, the Loyalty oath in front of the
	Mad Salvitor Recruit dog monster called America back in
	'42.  I can see the tattoo---NISEI REVENGE---through
	the finely pressed khaki shirt, man!  Strolling.
	That's what I call it.  The sky is a blue-black
	newspaper cut out with a Marine bayonet screaming "Ban
	Gay Sex" in a Supreme Court accent.  God's moon quivers
	epileptic with secret sperm.  They don't want nobody
	cruising or dancing on the street in spicy angles.
	Only Soldier positions are legal in Freetown.  Maxim
	#5: Destroy every human cell that spells Love.
	Everything is on a fancy ferris wheel of blood,
	disguise and artificial crank.  Basketball idols and
	football heros crackle on a pyre at the center of Main
	Street, and the music from a lonely heart-torn Corvette
	of teen resentments spills.  All the bedroom windows
	are breaking into a confetti of hot laughter.
	Heterosex-Megaton Man is wearing his favorite polka-dot
	tie and is on a tap dance marathon with the Soviets.  I
	think of Little Manuel in second grade.  Logan Heights
	Varrio.  1957.  I see Ms. Simmons slamming him in the
	cloak room.  Manuel is frozen.  Looking into a red
	liquid mirror on the oak grain floor.  You ain't
	nothing but a hound dog.  *Elvis and Chevys Forever* is
	written on every classroom wall.  The horrible cloak
	room shrinks and disappears into a yellow knot with the
	face of Csilla Molnar; a seventeen year old blonde
	beauty queen that committed suicide today because she
	couldn't handle all the attention that the public was
	giving her.  Csilla and the public and in-between, the
	Mad Salvitor Recruit Dog counts the dollars in his
	pin-stripe jacket.  Csilla, your hair is olive oil
	pouring from the Hyatt Regency, slowly, covering all
	the escape ladders with feverish glass.  Pink
	fingernail polish floods the dining rooms.  Olive tar
	webs stream down the Manikin panty house empire legs
	twitching in the Department store.  Csilla, Miss
	Hungary 1986, can you hear me?  My uncle Beto Quintana
	taught us all about rage in a Mexican way.  I never
	thought I would tell you this.  In the 20's we migrated
	North with thousands carrying splinters and old vases.
	My mother, Lucha, my aunt, Lela, my grandmother,
	Juanita: three in black silent mourning of a life past
	crucified with brick beds and long walks through *la
	Colonia Roma* looking for food and Destiny.  Later,
	somehow, in El Paso, my uncle put together a comedy
	show---El Barco de La IllusIon---where he showed
	*Tin-Tan* how to crack a joke and where *El Charro
	Avitia* made his first debut.  Then, one day he came
	here, made tortillas on a tortilla machine, Mexican
	candy in dark kettles and spun Mexican oldies for Radio
	KOFY.  We followed.  His hands were made of anise and
	basil.  He took us to the wharf where the illegal boats
	docked.  And he opened up the crate of smuggled songs
	and literature.  I'll never forget you.  I'll never
	forget you.  And we scattered about, on an infinite
	orange shore looking for each other, again.  My love,
	come closer, now.  I need you.  Weave your arms through
	me.  Pour your burning opal breasts into me; spin their
	twin halos inside me, glowing closer above the ruby
	forests of my soul.  Forever.  Kiss me.  Listen to me.
	This is the most elegant nation in the world.  I love
	the new fashions for '88.  Don't you?  All the floors
	are clean.  Waxed properly.  The aisle glistens.  The
	Mayor dances to the numbers that are predictable.
	Minority Matthew says he will sell you the Real Last
	Letters of Slavery.  The Rock top hit of the
	year---*Afrikan Murder*---blasts out.  Everyone is
	feeling romantic.  The hands of Victor Jara and the
	flayed heart of Rodrigo Rojas fall out of Nowhere, like
	phosphorescent meteors and explode into Red plam trees
	spurting gold honey on the plaza.  At the dark hour of
	five.  *A las cinco de la tarde.  !Eran las cinco en
	todos relojes!  !Ay que terribles cinco de la tarde!
	!Que no quiro verla!  DIle a la luna que no quiro ver
	la sangre de Rodrigo sobre la arena.  Can you hear the
	scream from the basement of General Hospital?  A brown
	baby is crying, standing, pointing at you.  A wave of
	bees crashes out of the billion watt Gibson amp in her
	chest.

			Juan Felipe Herrera
			1987


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Notes:
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These are my notes to help fill in some gaps, and I don't guarantee a
whole lot in terms of accuracy.  An Obon is a buddhist festival held
during a certain time of the year, and in the US buddhist churches
often put on mini-fairs.  Manzanar and Tule Lake are the names of two
of the concentration camps in which Japanese Americans were held during
World War II.  The Nisei, second-generation Japanese Americans, were
the bulk of the incarcerated and most of the eligible age Nisei were
inducted into the armed forces while their relatives stayed in the
camps.  The "salvitor" in "Mad Salvitor Recruit dog monster" is
probably a revision of "salvador" meaning "saviour".  Heterosex
-megaton man is Ronald Reagan, of course.  "Logan Heights Varrio" is
the Logan Heights Barrio (in Spanish, "b" and "v" are pretty close -
he's "correcting" for pronounciation) in San Diego, also known as
Barrio Logan, a large and poor Mexican community somewhat south of
downtown, and not terribly far from a much poorer black community up
Logan Ave.  "El Barco de La IllusIon" is literally "the ship of the
illusion" or "the ship of illusion", but may be a reference to
something else.  I thought the San Diego mayor in 1988 was Maureen
O'Connor, but it might have been the convicted felon Roger Hedgecock.
Victor Jara was a popular Chilean folksinger who opposed the coup that
overthrew elected President Salvador Allende in 1973.  If I got the
story right, after his arrest and torture by the junta, Jara was thrust
out in front of a crowd of regime supporters.  His hands were broken
and he was given a guitar to play.  In a last act of defiance, he began
playing and singing a protest song and was machine-gunned to death.  I
don't know of Rodrigo Rojas, but his story was probably similar.  The
spanish section at the end reads something like: "Five in the
afternoon.  It was five on all clocks!  Oh, what terrible things at
five in the afternoon!  I don't want to see it!  Tell it to the moon
that I don't want to see the blood of Rodrigo over the sand!"  The
invocation of the moon may be a reference to craziness - lunacy.