Rane Arroyo

INSTEAD OF FLAMENCO BEFORE OUR EYES


The graffiti artists are now grown-ups,
returned to childhood in prisons for
crimes not about art. Some of them
are in maximum security art galleries.

The neighborhood isn’t yet used to
obscurity, but color hasn’t lost its
street credentials: the lotería cards in
shop windows, the rooster on Tito’s

tattooed arm, the busy blue tears
washing windows, the gold hair dye
on sale, the walks gowned in green:
all this open air, this expansiveness

only suggested in coloring books.
It’s a haunted city without ghosts.
Harsh rains don’t erase the hoopla
of our breaths eating away at the brick.

Rane Arroyo is the author of many books of poems, the latest being the Sky's Weight (Turning Point Press). He has won many awards even though he writes in Toledo, Ohio (editors claim to never have heard of it.) His site is www.myspace.com/ranearroyo. His new book of poems is due in Spring, White As Silver. Writing, luckily, has kept him in trouble.