Elvis in the Inner City
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I was Elvis in the 70s, not swinging hips, Not wearing suede shoes, but just the same, In Canvas Chuck Taylors with my own svelte moves, Spinning rap, scratching vinyl to the tunes of Kurtis Blow, the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash And the hip-hop of the hibity-hip-hip of other Rappers, making rap mine, rhyming to The boogie to the boom of the beat, beat, beat.
Mom and Dad's charros, same as Lawrence Welk's Instrumentals were stuff of old country boleros, But I had my rap, bebop and I'd rap, rap, rap.
The other side of the city, like the flip side of A one-hit wonder, bopped heads to Van Morrison, Jim Morrison, and Van Halen, but I couldn't break A pop to lyrics that weren't about me, Inner city, inequality, in the record store I be.
Boom boxes, size of refrigerators, walked up and Down projects giving concerts for free, And rap was made for me.
Until I—a lone white square on a checkerboard, Reciting amidst Blacks of the block— Froze, could not get my lips to vibrate, Sync the refrain of the word "nigger."
I, rockless, rapless, Without a side A nor a side B, Stuttered, strutted, struggled, To find someone who would Rhyme with me.
José B. Gonzalez is a professor of English at the U. S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, CT, and co-editor of Latino Boom: An Anthology of U. S. Latino Literature and LatinoStories.com. He has published poetry and nonfiction prose in a number of periodicals and anthologies, including Calabash, Colere, Coloring Book, Nantucket: A Collection, and New England Quarterly. He was born in San Salvador.
