Carlos, the Chicano Cat

Editor’s Note: Poems by Carlos, aka Marty, from “their” book “Carlos, the Chicano Cat.” Read about them by clicking on the “Author” tab on the black menu bar and then scroll down to “Martin Lara”.

Carlos, the Chicano Cat

Hey, Vato! How can you feed me this crap?
It’s got meat byproducts, and giblets,
that mad cow stuff they sweep up
with the sawdust, all for two bits a can.

You wonder how I can read, Vato?
I learn on Sesame Street
just like you. And, I listen to NPR.

During the day when you’re locked
out of the house, I work out
on the laptop. Two paw slaps
on the starter switches
and that pinche cursor is mine!
I’m the poet in this crib, Vato.
You’re just my amanuensis.

I delete it all before five o’clock
but the machine don’t forget.
When your fingers hit the keys,
when your palms rest on the computer casing
my words that once filled the screen
dance to your brain. It’s called residual
cybernetic memory, Vato.
Catmagic!

You don’t pull these lines out of the air, Vato.
¡Su casa es Casa de Carlos!
You’re just my hand secretary.
Who feeds who here anyway?

Set a place on the table for me, Vato.
No more saucers on the floor.
And start eating fresh fish,
the catch of the day for protein;
none of this smelly stuff from the can.
And pasta, Vato, topped with alfredo
or seafood spaghetti sauce with a little bowl
of Dos Equis on the side.

Red meat’s OK, too, sweet and sour beef ribs,
cannibal t-bone steaks, maybe some tacos
with clam sauce, and menudo once a week.

The menu don’t change, Vato, I’ll take catcaps
and roll in your underwear a piece at a time,
your toes will mash hairballs in your shoes,
and you’ll wake up to see my tail sprinkling
midnight holy water on your face.

Waves at the Beach

It’s the surf old fishermen, and beachcombers love,
even if they don’t get wet. You can see it in the way
they squint as if they were looking into the mystery
of God’s eye, locked into a vanishing point at the horizon’s edge
where sea meets sky. For these, something always washes up,
a shell, a seaweed whip, a secret design traced in the retreating foam.
They’re related to the strangers who spend their time sitting
on bus benches, never catching a ride, but who peer past
the rainbow oil slicks of the street and gaze into a spectrum
we can’t see. They talk to phantoms for hours
while we pass by, wisps of fog, pieces of wind.

The city whispered once to my brother and he disappeared
with the derelicts of Fisherman’s Wharf; my father heard
the Sirens’ call of the Farallone Islands and walked away
into the waves, caught by a dream he couldn’t fathom;
my mother spoke to the spirits who lived in bottles
of Puerto Rican Rum and confided her dying sorrows
to the peeling paint of a cheap hotel room; and I
watch the wind dance through stands of aspens
and listen to the language of the leaves with my wife
and children and wonder if the mountain
is like the city and the sea.

Watching Kabotie

A duststorm blew across the Painted Desert.
It threw pink sand in the air.
Kachinas danced on the clouds,
while the Wind, that slow carver,
changed its expression once again
and etched a new face
onto the landscape.

Copyright © 2024 Estate of Martin R. Lara

Cover art by Joanna Kaufman