The soccer heads I polled don't believe the U.S. has the cojones to roll up to World Cup Games with U Haul Moving Trucks full of I.C.E. agents and racially profile and (il)legally detain people CBP Agents thought were in the country illegally. In other words, these heads feel that Trump, Incorporated can be shamed and are not going to risk a public relations black eye by sending I.C.E. agents to support local police during games of the 2026 World Cup. It is slightly ridiculous to boycott the 2026 FIFA World Cup. I speak solely here as an individual, but there is not much one person can do against a behemoth like FIFA. The reality is that I like to watch the games, the fanfare excites me, makes my heart flutter; I get to connect with Angelenos of all creeds over the supremacy of futbol. Let me be clear, what makes me worry are the lengths at which Infantino goes to placate Trump, and what that might mean for Latinos. Most of it is hearsay and intended to feed the rumor mills, but there is talk that Infantino is going to placate Trump by honoring him with a peace award. The summer before I turned eleven, the Argentine National Soccer Team won their second World Cup Title. My father wore a neat, auburn beard that my mother abhored. So, obviously, eventually she would bet him that Argentina would NOT win the World Cup. And, the only way to answer that wager was by offering his quasi-Assyrian beard as collateral to proclaim, clairvoyantly, what it was his duty to proclaim: Argentina (with Maradona) were going to win the World Cup! My father had been wearing that beard ever since he lost his hair at the tender age of 25, and it provided a nice follicle ballast between his face and his pelada (bald spot). My father is a handsome man that was hit with the Arab stick; his eyes sparkle like frankincense, and his smile is an irridescent scimitar. He's sturdy--barrel panza--but don't let that veneer fool you. Mi viejo is a stone-cold striker, a touch mago, he can take your head off at 20 meters, or lazer beam it to the inside of the box. The reason I remember the 1986 World Cup is because Maradona cheated to best England with that first goal, and then shut all the haters up by scoring one of the most gangster, batshit goals ever with the second. If I am not mistaken, Cantor, the Spanish-language futbol commentator, called that goal by Maradona or Maradona himself, a cosmic kite, or something bananas like that.

WORST DAY EVER AT SAN ANGELES LIBRARY CORPORATION

Ode to Mbappe

Ode to Mbappe by Yago Cura The real question is Mbappe’s new new newer than Zizou’s hawkeye glidetelligence? Does Mbappe’s athletic effervescence cloud CR7’s piston-popping paladinbrand? Is Mbappe more dangerous than Platini’s murderous chip syndicate from just outside the penalty box? If the new new is where we don't look, just beyond where we predilect, is it a space we are capacitated to hold? Mbappe breaks my heart in 2018 by spanking Argentina, but gets his heart broken in 2022 by a stronger, more resolute and plucky Argentine? True, Mbappe’s not the first ingenue thrust onto the cold proscenium of presence–playing for Monaco at the tender age of fourteen–but let us not forget Pontiff Pele scored his first World Cup goal at 17 against Wales in 1958. So, not the first time we've been sold a manifest about the new new in front of the advertisers. Not the last time a safety mask will be worn by an Honorary Ninja Turtle, nor the last time a protective vizard will be employed by a big-speed demon nez. Mbappe is a pace abuser; he will let you set your best pace and demolish your best pace, like he did to Masche ten minutes into the final in 2018, and it was only until Rojo clotheslined him that he was thwarted but Les Blues got their penal with Griezmann, and three bangers more, and earned their second star. As a lifetime hinchas of the Albiceleste, do you know how difficult it is to sing your praises and still be welcome at camp? I would rather praise your prodigious speed and be done with the whole affair. Still, we must concede, Monsieur PSG, Mister 20 Miles per Hour Counter, Mister Monaco FC Kid, Mr Real Madrid Firestarter, Mister Devourer of Space, Monsieur Flying Scissorkick Against Nice. Just because Mbappe is new new doesn't preclude him from losing Mundiales and getting benched by Deschamps–pulled from the penalty squad–just because he’s the captain, but also might be the liability stopping his team from clinching that position. Do you think Maradona would have allowed himself to be benched? Could you imagine Zlatan the Hun saying the country’s victory is greater than his aggregate contributions? It was not pain that kept Mbappe out of the firing squad against Portugal in the Copa this year but knowledge of self, know- ledge of limitation, ego extirpation. I almost like Mbappe more after debacles and ridiculous injuries have seasoned his temperament, downshifted his mojo, but not engaged the brake pads of his mediocrity, not allowed personal hindrance to narrate the trajectory of his billboard-ness. I keep tripping, returning to Paul Simon's chanson, "The Boy in the Bubble," thinking what a curse to be any generation's pearl, a defacto savior spectators only know from the narrowest angle on telezoom lenses. But, maybe the only way up the pop charts is up the pop charts, maybe fielding cracks onto the cold, emerald tarmac and seeing how they taxi is the real Turing Test of the new new? The highest compliment I can concede is that Mbappe was such an existential threat to Argentina's victory in 2022 that giving five more minutes to this motherloving Donatello-looking, snail-eating, Usain Bolt exponent from the outskirts of Paris (Bondy to be exact) would have prevented Argentina from attaining their third star.

MIS HIJOS

I grew up in Miami a Latino, but not Cuban
Which is kind of like, what’s the point of this?


Then, I moved to Western Mass for grad school
and the pedigree of my Latinoness did not matter
because there were so few of us you could tag us
like coyotes or timberwolves, and track us as blips
on a cold, green Transponder.


Then, I moved to (back to) Brooklyn:
Gravesend, Ocean Parkway and Avenue O
but was not Russian, Syrian, Chinese, Ukrainian, or Israeli,
although the Guatemalan Super in my building was in a Police
cover band in the basement,Tuesday nights.


Then, I moved to Spanish Harlem, One Hundredth and Third,
but was not Puerto Rican nor Dominican with a twist of ‘Rican
nor even distant Puerto Rican adjacent, like Cuban.


Then, I moved to Harlem proper and because I was the only
Latino in my building I became Mexican by default because that’s
who was working in the kitchens and making Harlem sparkle.


I taught in the Bronx but was not Dominican, was not Black
but I could speak Cuban, and this meant I could rapport with parents,
and make home visits and dance a mean bachata and support the right
bodegas, and order bacon, egg, and cheese with local aplomb.


Then, I moved to Los Angeles because my wife grew up here and
I was not Mexican nor Salvi (El Salvadorean) nor even Korean, and


still my California babe of a wife gave me two beautiful California boys
that are ALL gringo but HALF Mexican and HALF Argentine so there are three
things they know despite orientation, intuition, or calculation.


My boys are carnivorous, swarthy, and fancy futbol over football
not just as a matter of aesthetic but as a statement on skill.


My boys feel good eating black noodle goo and seaweed crunch tablets
and pozole plum-puddinged with tripe or ceso or chocolate-covered grass-
hoppers and insect lollipops. They tear up tacos, demolish burritos, and
crave a good choripan every now and again.


My boys are dark morsels, raven-haired, discrete, olive-skinned geeks.
They carry the Levant, the U.S./Mexico Border, the California Deserts
in their maw, in their genetic Powerschool, in their take-home folders.


The older boy adores his grandfather’s futbol club.
The younger boy, at five, can already run with the ball.

IMMUTABLE LAW OF DISHES

This is dishes.,

Dishes, dishes, this is.

This is dishes, dishes. dishes.

This is–dishes, dishes, this is

Dishes, This is dishes so,

Dishes, dishes, dishes.

Dishes, this is dishes?

This is dishes, dishes,

dishes, this is, dishes.

Dishes this is, dishes,

say it with me, thes dishes

is this dishes is this thistle

a dish of this is or dishes,

this is the this dishes, is this

Dishes, this is, or is dishes

Dishes, dishes, dishes this

is it, this is dishes, dishes

This is dishing dishes, is it not

dissolution of this is, dishes,

dishes, dishes, and even if

this is dishes, there is this is

which says, thesis this is dishes.

ELBA AND PINI ON NOSTRAND AVE

Elba was a badass broad in every sense of the word. Despite having to rely on immigrant English, she succesfully petitioned Congressperson Kirkpatrick to demand her son, Jose Antonio, be released from the prison where he had been since turning 16. I was in the room when she passed and I can't tell you what it means to me yet, but her ascendancy is assured because she was the tia with the pad on Nostrand Ave. Elba was the reason I was born in a Jewish hospital named for a 13th century seer in Brooklyn. She's the catalyst for my parents forging ahead in parenthood by having my sister. Without her maybe my folks don't leave on a freight ship, they stay in Argentina and get caught up, disappeared, and I don't exist. In fact, the fact you are reading this on this side, and we can share this conscious sentence means Elba overstays her tourist visa with Pinino. Pinino is my Uncle, Elba's husband. He's part goat and part toothpick, and will not be easily surprised by any of the rhetoric you might want to fantabulate towards his earholes. Pinino grew up poor in Buenos Aires and spent a whole year in a cast because of scoliosis. Pinino was no stranger to adversity; he lived near Fort Apache, one of Buenos Aires most notorious slums, and all during high school had to carry a zip gun for protection. But this tale ain't about Pinino, it's about Elba, and what Elba saw in Pinino enough to convince her to immigrate to the blackest part of Brooklyn in 1973.

Because I am a Square, Old Fuck that Lives on the West Side (of Los Angeles)

It’s easy to get things mixed up. We are, however you paint it, a deciduous rabble of debutantes and derelicts in leather pants. We see parking spaces as barometers of whether businesses will actually have any business existing. We prune our echo chambers of signature interference, deny you the merge of conversation, the comeuppance of a dialogue; we rebuke your lane-change-chit-chat. If you’re on a bicycle in the bicycle lane, we’re aiming for your hind quarters. If you’re on an electric scooter we get to clip you between the hip and knee. If you’re a swarthy kid we reserve the right to never have seen you at all. We barrel down neighborhoods in all of our sedan-class tout suiteness. We Armor-All our sunglasses until they display pixelated avatar drivel. We tantalize our mufflers with ragamuffin megaphone elite gravity. We park like czars so as not to share the municipal parking loam. We block driveways, boulder causeways, break collarbone loading zones. We drive two blocks for milk, but not before lauding each other on the brand of dolphin-safe tuna, ignoring the dinosaur in the room. We pretend people bagging our food were born to bag our food. It’s easy to see sacrifice from the dashboard of my thrive. It’s easy to see how things get done when you’re a pilot ace. It’s easy to bury your feelings in a Frosty or thicker, chocolate shake food. It’s easy to believe the we we assume when you are are you. We assume no responsibility for your nuance, doodad, or eunich. We believe belief is the truest route to Wilshire. We believe bike lanes are fake news. We believe eons ago our ego took a really loud picture. We agree to send you via the route that takes you by the dying airport even though it will be sold slab by slab to scions of loft spaces and self-parking mavens.

LAX2MIA

Read the flyer for registration deets!

LA PALABRA SCHEDULE 2021

SCOPOLAMINE

--para Adolfo Guzman Lopez, truth obstretician y periodista

Papers say the two cops
that shot a non-lethal 40 mm
projectile into the throat
of my friend, a journalist,
acted well within means
and protocols and policy.


Cops say the round bounced
off a pregnant protestor or
belligenrent ectoplasm, so
do over, and chas-chas on the
bottom of their personnel files?


But, what of the duty and
discretion of sworn peace
officers?


If I live under CCTV regime,
why should cops get to decide
when centralized bodycams power
on their Cyclopslog?


Police are not
butlers for abuse, true true;
but, clap on my friends that clap
on star chambers of pedigree and power
and we begin to gots sword-prollems.


Sending out bruisers to enforce
peace is like sending out a tank
because someone stole your changuito.

What of the steering column
of these elite, peace-keepers?


What of the humanists in uniform
that have seen this all before
maybe, in crooked-ass cuneiform?


Quizas, una lecture sobre modales:
When you discharge pepperballs as you retreat
everyone is guilty as shit.

FOREWORD: 8 LA POETS

The first book HINCHAS published was a collection of ghazals for James Foley; I titled the collection "Ghazals for Foley" in honor of Jim's conversion to Islam, but also to highlight the rot, the void left in the world by Jim's graphic murder. This was 2016, almost 18 months after Foley's murder, and most of the ghazals that were published were from former classmates from the UMASS-Amherst Poets & Writers Program. One of the people that didn't go to school with Jim or I, but that submitted ghazals was radio journalist, Adolfo Guzman Lopez. He submitted a ghazal that added leagues to the collection, and solidified our burgeoning friendship.


In 2019, Adolfo invited me to be a part of a ragtag group of poets, writers, and thinkers called Project 1521. The group was called Project 1521 in an attempt to fight the erasure of the 500 years that had passed since Cortes plundered Tenochtitlan. The poets in this group were people like Adolfo and Adrian Arrancibia, two former poets from the Taco Shop Poets, and Linda Ravenswood, the mera mera of the Los Angeles Press, and the bawse behind the Melrose Poetry Bureau and several other literary incubators, and Gloria Enedina Alvarez, the most known unknown poetry matriarch in SoCal. For an interloper like myself (east coast douchebag and such) to be among working-class writers in Los Angeles that are wrestling with art in the pursuit of better rendering their aesthetic has been a major gift.


Linda and I initially geeked out over typewriters, and ended up with the legacy of Miriam Matthews, the first African-American credentialed librarian in California. She plied her trade for the Los Angeles Public Library at a time when she was probably the only person of color in every room all of the time. As a librarian of color in SoCal, I can attest to the peculiar ways in which patrons interact with librarians and vice versa (are YOU the librarian?). Linda and I were going to build an index of libraries that hire performers and build a super femmed out volume so that women of color were not only highlighted, but emphasized. We thought a print edition would be keen since we were going for maximum usability.

And then, the pandemic hit and body slammed our poor, poor mice plans. All of a sudden, all budgest were being contested, especially the print collection budgets of libraries. The demand for online books, services, and materials has literally upended most library systems in the U.S. leading to major library system layoffs in cities like Portland and Kansas City, MO. In other words, it's not that print is dead, but the symbiosis the library world has entertained for the last ten years, between print and online books, just tipped over dramatically into the half destined to be prey. I spoke with Linda and we decided to put the project with the namesake on hold, or at least switch it over to the digital world, and proceed with another project: 8 LA Poets.

Because the future is Female, or at the very least the future is super-less Testosteronny, I decided to publish only women poets in Los Angeles County and to prioritize wonen of color poets. Because Armine and Linda and I are in the same workshop, I have been front and center when they have read original pieces they've crafted on the spot. I have glimpsed their ferocity and basked in their analysis and feel in every sense of the word that they are the real deal. And that's because these bad ass ladies have built their houses from the ground up and never got the motherloving permits and didn't think to ask any government agency for permission. For example, Armine runs her own press and is so ovaries-to-the-wall that she left her steady job as an English teacher to stick her neck out and fight the good fight one word at a time.

Thank you for coming to this book and for drinking a little from its lip. We hope you like the sensory feast Linda has curated for you, and we hope to see you on the inside of this book where space has purposefully been alloted for you, dear reader.

5 QUESTIONS FOR STAR

I am going to interview Star Khan for "Librarians with Spines," volume 3 and I told her that I would have five questions to her by Monday but because of several familial obligations, I did not get her the 5 questions by Monday. However, we talked about the concept of "white time" so I know she will understand when she reads these questions.

1.) Personalmente, I am not un grande fan de reggeaton; I like Calle 13, but am also easily fatigued by the repetetive percussive drone of the genre. Why is Spanglish the reggeaton of dialects? En otras palabras, what about Spanglish is so off-putting to dominant Latinx groups? Should libraries delve into dialect for their signage dedicated to Latinx? In your work with libraries, might proper Spanish be more of an obstacle when serving/supporting U.S. Latinx?

2.) How can we better apoyar a nuestros bibliohermanas/hermanos in Latin America? Why have Latinx Librarians in N America not reached out to their counterparts in S America? Que es lo que Latin America nos puede brindar with respect to libraries and information professionals? Might libraries in N America choose to champion their counterparts in S America out of a professional courtersy, or do you think librarians como toda la gente are just as tribal as anyone else?

3.) According to el Pew Ctr for Internet Research, 61% of Latinx households have access to broadband at home compared with 79% of White households and 66% of Black households. How can Latinx households ensure academic acievement sin el WiFi en la casa? How do padres that can't afford WiFi right now get ahead of the curve and still find recursos for their children? How can US Latinx Librarians help to close the Digital Divide in Latinx households?

4.) Please tell us about your trayectorio as a librarian? How did you get to where you're at, and how did you persevere when your counterparts were not not particularly helpful. O sea, what is the clave for getting along in the library world as a Latinx Librarian? What does the future of biblioteacas hold in Oregon and the Pacific Northwest? How can Latinx Librarians get involved in ensuring libraries in Oregon stay funded and don't resort to layoffs?

5.) Borges said que el cielo tiene que ser una biblioteca? In your library heaven, what books, codices, or compendiums are on the shelf for everyone to look through and use for research? What texts are essential to a Latinx education? to a Spanglish education? Is there Spanglish in heaven? Do you think St Peter's like janglingn keys and abriendo puertas? In your version of heaven, who is on the roster?

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

HINCHAS PRESS BUTTONS

HINCHAS Press buttons, $1.00 on the site, https://bit.ly/3hvxqna

ECHOSTENCH

B asks me, does an echo have a stench?

When people talk at me I drop everything
and set my ears to listening.

Panda corrects me from the bedroom
when B asks me a physics question,
okay maybe doesn't correct me but
makes B know she knows answer too.

My parents are so bored they are going
to give themselves the 'Rona sin querer
completely by mistake but for a super
kooky reason like running out of BBQ sauce.

The Lego birdfeeders B and I made are sweet,
but we have since learned that little birds are jerks,
free-loading oafs that will spill lesser seeds
to beak at savory and scintillating flavorpods.

The baby moonwalks on your face if your sleep
in the bed, so I hangnail on the edge like a speedbump,
okay maybe not a speedbump but certainly a retaining wall.

I'm sending emails all day for work, but should I be
monitoring the acronyms for the daily dirty decree?

Should I be out beating cazuelas and bleating vuvuselas
about pandemic blues?

Do I go out then and make more trouble for myself
than I can possibly handle? Should I take advantage
of steals and bargains when the world is losing its
Purell mind, its miniature hand-sanitizer carabiner?

At the very least, you are going to have to support
the water balloon fight on the side of your wife and come
down hard on B when he sloshes an aquatic grenade at her face.

The problem with water balloons as a projectile are that they
are a dollar too late and a dollar too little.

How crisp the explosion of coldwater on my nape, down my shirt,
slaloming down my hirsute belly and quicksilver kissing my nipples.

FACE TIME WITH DAVID OF THE OCEAN

I spoke with an old
friend today on Face,
while chasing the baby
through a church
parking lot.

The friend on Face
was shooting hoops
on an empty indoor
basketball court.

He told me he was
in Texas because
the National Guard
needed him to mold
cadets into leaders,
but that his wife
was still in Northern
California with
the baby they adopted
from when they were
just guardians.

The baby tackled
the steps at back
and was picking up
speed, you should
have seen him
coordinate knees
to elbows and gallop
up them like a spider-
horse-monkey-jockey.

All that distance,
all those years, dis-
appeared from the cache
of this current I-don't-
know as we sat there
trying to make light
of old trophies,
lauding old colleagues,
recalling the work
only we clearly cared about.

Today I did Face
with an old friend,
a friend I used to
teach in the jail with
and the baby conquered
steps in a church parking
lot with great acoustics.

VETE AL INFIERNO ZINE

Yo, Happy 2020! Please download and fold this zine to use in any celebrations of the New Year, or if you just feel like making a 6-fold zine.

BECAUSE I'M SQUARE AND LIVE ON THE WEST SIDE

JACARANDA TAKEOVER

View this post on Instagram

Jacaranda Tunnel.

A post shared by Yago Cura (@hinchas_press) on Jun 19, 2019 at 11:22am PDT

What it is is two Jacaranda Trees
planted along the same longitudinal
on the south side of Inglewood Blvd.

They post up fifty feet into the air,
dusky, purple billows, that tumble into
a momentary tunnel over sidewalksides.

It's their takeover factor, sheer spectacle,
dueling cumulus branches, that toggles my awe
into something more feral and focused than zeal.

Except, I've come to put my infant son to sleep.
And, stumbled upon this enormous lavender aberration,
and, now, have to keep from erupting in the sharp sun?

Under the trees themselves, carpeted mauve wilt
that stains paint jobs and tinges the makeshift tunnel
drawn by the two Sumo jacaranda trees straddling Inglewood.

The mid-management palms grow away from las Jacaranda gemelas.
In fact, you won't find a plant not perturbed by the brightness
of their tasteless display, vegetation can be so shameless.

In the middle of the Jacaranda tunnel is a mail truck.
It is parked at the mouth of the tunnel on the other side
of all this purple, but there is no mailperson in sight.