Marc Huerta Osborn

At HoodSlam in West Oakland

a scantily clad pirate wrestler pins her spike-collared
opponent to the mat while an ululating
mass of sweat-soaked spectators chant
THIS IS REAL! THIS IS REAL! THIS IS REAL!
until I almost believe it. I’ve been trying to be more
cultured lately. I’ve been trying to take less
for granted. All summer, I break the bank
to see HoodSlam, Monster Jam, and stadiums
of teams that are all flying away. When did the Bay
become a centrifuge? Yes, I know the universe
has flung itself out since the start, a spiral
smear of decay, but I never thought the law
of entropy would act so fast, on the scale of city
blocks in the blink-time of our youth. The lights,
red or green, mean nothing anymore. Everyone just
hurtles through on their way from one hit-and-run
to another. Whenever I come home, I run
only into the people I want most
to avoid. Downtown is a nightmare. Last night
after drinks at Lucky 13, I dreamt of fire
engulfing my favorite taco truck. So today, my brothers
and I buy dos de lengua y dos de buche each,
con todo. Siempre con todo. We eat too fast after
smoking on the hoods of our cars across the water
from the port cranes we grew up calling
the Dinos. Salsa-pricked, our pores
open their mouths to exhale beads
of dew, all salt and translucent
trickle under cranelight, insisting:
this, too, is real.

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Marc Huerta Osborn‘s poetry appears in Rust + Moth, The Acentos Review, Ghost City Review, Juked, and The Westchester Review, among other places.