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300 A Face to Meet the Faces Baedeker for a Life Cut with Danger Rodney Gomez —John Valadez, Car Show, 2001 I don’t have night’s number. Wouldn’t know it if I went through a phonebook with a highlighter and a bloodhound. Where’s it hidden in her halter top, the Aztec tats he plays loud as tom-toms every time he takes his t-shirt off? I worry about the sun in this backyard barbecue. What if they added wrong and it’s heavy enough to go black hole? There go my tax returns. There goes the bread I baked in the shape of a rosary. Better to sing a war ballad. When I was a kid all I wanted was to nurse a bloody rifle between my thighs. I could’ve galloped with Villa, a flask of pulque slung across my waist. But don’t mistake me for a sympathizer. I hoard rejection in my cheeks and porcupine needles for your outreach. During the day, I’m a strain on group identity. Rolling twenties in a street lined with palms, samuraied by Hurricane Dolly. Pouring myself into a junked Impala with the winos from the VFW. 301 The Muse Talks Back I know a little Spanish, the bristly kind you speak when you want a Granny Smith at the grocer. The tongue throws off its crutches. You’ve got to think in a deeper hunger so a round brown stomach can carry your swollen arguments. So what are you? And there is silence. Notice how nothing that matters has a mouth. ...

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