Poema para Waltercito

Chico, it's 2016 and I'm presenting to a roomful of White librarians
in the South Bay about Latino Senior computer classes in Spanish, and

I exploit your misterio quotient in one of my slides, an interstellar headshot,
elicits such a response that I rewatch those episodes of Primer Impacto on
YouTube thinking, Waltercito, you never broke character in our story of your life.

Now that you are firmly esconced into the ether architecture of our Latinidad,
you show us how to embrace love and become star-architects ourselves.

Your most terrestrial critics charge your timeless aura with sterile banter
about the gender of this one or that one, when they’re not even on the escenario.

Waltercito, bailemos un bolero on the edge of the Milky Way,
your hands and writhing wrists stick in the cosmic centrifuge that is our galaxy,
and let your dance transcended fractal refrain.

Waltercito, Moms and I are watching you on Primer Impacto.

Fam, it's 1994, which means it’s my first year at my Miami commuter college,
and we're waiting for your Scorpio edict, Waltercito, fifteen words written specifically,
prophetically about our stinging species that prove your prestige as our rabbi.

Moms and I are both Scorpios, so, naturally we’re suspicious of everyone’s motives,
but relaxed enough to let our stingers down and heed unsolicited advice from a gangster.

Your segment on Primer Impacto starts, and the producers drop you into space.

You're sitting on a Calculus White Rattan Armchair and you're wearing
a pumpkin majordomo kimono uniform and addressing the other, less-important signs first.

Waltercito, Tia Mercedes draped a PR flag on your ataud and plopped a jibaro hat
at your head. There was so much music at your funeral that Wille Acosta was photographed
mumbling lyrics into the cracks of your casket, and hugging the curves with his eyes closed.

So, there was no mistaking your loyalties to who you were at your core, the things that defined
and defied you. Waltercito, on what plane y en cual dimension do you find yourself?

It's 2020, and, of course, your Pisces-ass finds a way to pass to the portals
during a pandemic. Now, Waltercito when your message of love compounded by love,
now when we could really use your laser-guided abuelita guidance systems
and genderless excesses on orientation, now when we are calling out your name,
we find ourselves at the whims of Stupid Jupiter.

No, loquito, it’s 1987, and my parents have sent my sister and I to Baires for the summer.
It’s way past our American bedtime, but my Argentine cousins are promising us that after
“Las Gatas de Porcell,” a Puerto Rican wizard with a cape is going to spill secrets
from the Yucatan to Tierra del Fuego

LAUNCHING OF THE JAMES FOLEY SCRIPTORIUM

Today, I am launching a project very close to my heart in which I send you a free, gently-used book from the James Foley Scriptorium

in exchange for a zine you send me that I will add to the West LA Regional Branch Zine Library