The Red Bandana

(with apologies to Joyce & Williams)

This is a portrait of the cholo as a young man,

lying on his bed, hand under head, bare feet crossed

at the ankles. He’s looking at a black & white

picture she took with her prima at the fair

last year. He’s listening to War’s Greatest Hits

& training his hair with a red paisley bandana.

His friend just got a tattoo, a snarling Bulldog

like an invitation to a bite that won’t ever heal.

He’d get one too, black & gray ink engraving

virgin flesh across his chest, but he’s not sure

what to get. He thinks of getting La Virgencita,

eyes as familiar as his mother’s under a radiant

veil. He thinks of hands clasped in prayer.

A concrete cross. A red, red rose, stem twisted

into a crown of needles. Or an AK-47—

something to believe in. If she asked him,

he’d get her name. Reyna. Tonight, he’ll dream

he’s standing in front of his dead mother’s

mirror, trying on faces before the first day

of 11th grade. She’ll be there in the morning,

bus 20, a freshman in a sundress as lovely

as cempasúchil, orange & yellow & violet,

her smile as bright as the moon above Sky Harbor.

He needs the right look to approach her.

He’s been a skater, a jock, & now he’s a cholo.

Soon he’ll be a tweaker & then a holy roller,

& maybe one day, if God is as good as they say,

a mystic, living with the wife of his youth

far from the city, growing cannabis on ancestral

land, eating wild honey & locusts, composing

apocryphal poetry in varrio calligraphy,

a chronicle of a nation’s delivery from slavery

in Egypt/Babylon/Rome, victory over Death,

the destruction of this World, the coming of the

Next. He’s doesn’t know it yet, but one day

he’ll dance like a madman, twirl like a drunken

dervish to the rhythm of his grandchildren’s

laughter, spinning like a wheel within a wheel

in Ezekiel’s vision. Someday soon, all will

be revealed, but for now through this wormhole

—Behold!—He’s just a wannabe cholo in love

who dreams in orange & yellow & violet

& so much depends upon that picture.

---

KENNETH CHACÓN (he/him/that vato) is a 6ixth Sun Xicano from Fresno, Califas. He is the author of The Cholo Who Said Nothing & Other Poems (Turning Point 2017) and his work has appeared in Huizache, BorderSenses, The Cimarron Review, Spillway, Blackbird, The Colorado Review, Palette Poetry among others. He is a father of five and grandfather of five and teaches writing at Fresno City College.

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