Kenny Uong: Metro is the way to Go

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Traveling in Los Angeles is not a fuss,

if everyone rides Metro Rail or Metro Bus.

Going with a friend, you can’t say no,

Since Metro is the way to go!

The county is connected

via public transportation.

Together, we are one big nation.

When we take transit everywhere,

We feel courageous, like a bear.

It’s always exciting 

to soar over the traffic

that is causing all of the havoc.

Passengers wait for the train to arrive,

after a work day from nine to five.

Surfing the internet or reading a book,

then into the distance, they all look.

For only a dollar seventy-five,

you don’t have to drive.

To request a stop while riding the bus, simply pull the cord.

But for heaven’s sake, please don’t pull it if you are bored!

A public transit enthusiast like me,

would always use transit to get from Point A to Point B.

I definitely feel positive and free,

when I am not the one who’s driving, you see.

From skyline to sea,

or from SFV to SGV,

people all know

that Metro is the way to go!

K.U.

Kenny Uong is an avid transit rider and transit advocate who is currently an Urban Studies and Planning Major at Cal State Northridge. Having grown up in a household that relied on public transit to get around the region and seeing firsthand how unreliable transit service negatively affects riders, he strives to help improve it in the near future. Kenny originally published this poem in 2016.

CirculatinG

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While young, we stood tall against each other
Without knowing we were mountains.

Now grown, we stand alone, though
Betraying surfaces like fountains.

Mounting finite time and space,
We turn into the earth again,

The way knowledge turns to wisdom,
Only to become unknown again.

J.T.

This poem is dedicated to every brother, friend and neighbor gone too soon from our communities.

American

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American Removal begins with a language.

It starts with Indians as “uncivilized,” “savages.”

It expands with Black bodies deemed as “niggers” and “3/5ths.”

It proliferates with “providence” but only for Aryan destiny, “by the millions.”

American Removal embraces its robes with an “Indian Removal Act,”

Followed by a war on “Dirty Mexicans,”

Followed by a “Chinese Exclusion Act,”

Followed by Filipinos as “niggers.”

Then “Japs Keep Moving.”

American Removal tests its first PSAs with “public enemies,” “hobos, tramps, and vagrants,” but ultimately settles for Black & Brown youth as “gangs.”

It then sows its modern seeds with a “red line.”

Red line maps delineate our colors, separating “undesirables” and “subversive racial elements” from “homogeneous,” “single-family [white] homes.”

Until a war to end all wars. Two atom bombs dropped on “Japs,” but none on German nazis or Italian fascists.

After the war, American Removal grows to include “Un-American,” “Black radicals,” and “communist hippies” into its lexicon.

Once these begin to ring hollow, it reinvigorates itself: “[Black] drugs and gangs,” “[Black] welfare queens,” [Latinx and Asian] immigrant “invasion.”

Then national publication on a generation of new [Black] “super-predators.”

American Removal then sanctifies itself, calling on “[white] property owners” to “revolt.”

Followed by calls to “Save Our State,”

Followed by “English (Only) For Our Children.”

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, American Removal finds still new life-blood: Global war on Muslims as “terrorists,” “extremists,” then once again “radical.”

A generation later, it relishes in “good people on both sides,” “shit-hole countries,” and “stand back and stand by.”

But when you ask about a million bodies burned by drones in the Global South since 2001,

Or when you ask about civil uniforms shooting down Black men, women and children,

When you ask about the forced sterilization of incarcerated Latina women in private detention centers,

Or when you ask about the gentrification of our neighborhoods, a city’s homeless “clean-ups” as new police patrol new hotels around the corners,

When you ask American Removal if it may dignify these acts with so much as an acknowledgement,

That’s when all you get is silence.

American Removal concludes with a silence.

J.T.

Brothers

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Used to be inseparable. Just two kids from two cities along campus ground together.

Used to philosophize and riddle and debate as if no issue in our midst couldn’t diffuse.

Used to reflect on our classes together. Mutual friends. Romances. Foreign policy. No end.

Broke down habits. Responses to each other. Prism of our minds. That’s what homies were.

What being alive was.

Remember our deliberations on these grounds together:

Maximum profit by maximum strain,

Watching it unfurl across the world around us in lanes.

Student debt. Police. Prison policy.

Fast food. Oldies. Air in our pockets.

Worn out rooms another night. But, the unity.

Except never would have expected walls to build around us as they did,

Somewhere along the way the strain got the best of us.

Perhaps the best of me,

Perhaps the best of you.

Now memory flutters wailing past Los Angeles,

Slave patrol still hovering.

People still coughing up on the sidewalk

While still more profits margin.

Turning the corner,

A brother hobbling along the street asks if I know

Where he can find a pookie,

“Nah’.”

It’s been ten summers since we first spoke the rage.

Before another ten go by, I hope to find you again

If only to break free from this rift with you.

One between two

J.T.

A fence with barbed wire barricades the site of the former Super Pan Bakery at Virgil avenue and Monroe street

We Raise It: A Poem for Los Youngs During These Times

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(Pandemic in Los Angeles: Day 88)

I know. It’s not fair. It’s been more than three months since everything up and changed. And since then, nothing has changed. Everything is still a mess. Home is stressful.

I know. Even if someone says otherwise, still feels like there’s nowhere else to go. Even when we step out, everything is weird. Strangers are stranger. It’s not fun anymore.

I know. The pupuserias are not the same. The panaderias take forever to get into. The burger joints aren’t even there anymore. Pockets don’t have enough to get much anyway.

I know. You didn’t get to say goodbye to your friends. Everyone knew this was the last year you’d get to see each other. Now everyone is fighting. Everyone online is just going at each other.

I know. Summer’s coming up and there’s no pool at the house. No AC. Not enough fans. All the sockets are taken.

I know. Family is stressful. Everyone says the same about how we’ll get through this. Doesn’t feel like we’re getting through.

And I know. It can’t be long before some more riots pop off. Cops killing Black people. Whites got no love. How are you supposed to walk around when they can get you any minute. Racism’s worse than corona.

I know. Everyone online is just stressing. And if there’s just one more argument–

I know. It’s not fair. Everyone is scared. It’s no love. Can’t get any love.

I know. It’s like a war that’s coming. It’s dirty. But rules are rules. If they hate us, gotta hate back.

I know it feels this way. And I know it feels like it just stays this way.

I know it’s not a time for promises. But this is not a promise.

This is just to let you know that through it all, you’re still heard, still seen, and still the future.

To let you know that you got every right to be mad, like from the top of your lungs, ready to let it all out. We’re mad with you. We’re tired of the same old story too.

But I know that you know. That if it’s another day we get, we gotta take it.

So we raise it.

J.T.

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selective focus photography of tombstone

Victor Avila: Hope Amid Stones both Tall and Gray

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Infinity does not know the grave
though the digger’s hand still turns the soil.
These monuments that some think grand
only mutely invoke the names
of the long forgotten dead.

There is no permanence
as these stones hope to proclaim.
Whether we are buried over here or over there
only bones below in a box remain.

The earth gladly welcomes them.

Perhaps infinity is just a word
Like truth and God and love.
Are they just pretty syllables
for atheists and blasphemers
to ponder in their despair?

Faith is irrational. It’s the logic of angels.

No, I will never understand
the mystery of the silent mountains.
not far beyond these gray and somber stones.
All the secrets of the universe
I’ll leave for others to discover.
The unknown will remain for me unknown.
I am glad of this.

I walk among the intaglio of crosses
and joyfully accept my mortality.
It’s because of this that I do not fear
the eventuality of days.

For every story, even ours, has a conclusion.

The essence of everything
we hold briefly in our hands.
In reality though, there is nothing in between them.
I find this notion both magnificent and grand.

Dust in time will cover even this.

Nothing in life is learned
until beauty becomes our mirror.
Only then will we catch a glimpse
of all that we call immortal.
We do well when we chase the ethereal.

For it is in the chasing of it, that we find most joy.

V.A.

Victor Avila is a winner of the Chicano Literary Prize. His poetry collection, “The Mystic Thrones of Night,” was published through Vagabond Books in 2019. Victor’s poetry has been widely published and anthologized. Recent work can be found in such collections as EXTREME: An Anthology for Social and Economic Justice, and The Border Crossed Us. Victor has taught in California schools for over thirty years.

Second Chance (A Ninth Grade Student’s Poem on Redemption)

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Everyone needs a second chance,

A second chance to say goodbye.

To say sorry, to understand.

To hold a grudge or to start a new chapter,

A chance to remain hurt, or a chance to forgive and forget.

But why remain hurt if there’s a second chance to stop hurting.

I need a second chance, you need a second chance,

We need a second chance.

MT

MT is a Black 9th grade student at Dorsey High School in the West Adams area of Los Angeles. His favorite hobbies include playing basketball when he’s outside, and playing Fortnite when he’s stuck at home. This poem is dedicated to his father.