Poetry

Laura Taylor photo

By

Alejandro Escudé

The South Side of Town

The last thing I may see before I die

is a plastic red cup, the reflection there

of my contorted face, recalling the beers

I drank in college, how they were arranged

in diagrams of hate, how the coldness came

in Santa Cruz fog from the nearby ocean

carrying the wacky howls of the harbor seals

melding with that of the barfing partiers.

By day, we were suffused in anti-hate speech,

run over by Take Back the Night girls,

tossed sideways by lusty environmentalists.

But on the south side of town, there was

talk of tall white crosses aflame; “burning 

by a road,” said my black schoolmate who 

was also a freshman at the California college.

She saw it from a bus—that was when

I first learned how distant beauty and truth

were from one another. Still train tracks

at two a.m., I hitched a ride to the dorms

where there were pink triangles printed

on black-colored fliers lying on the floor.

‘Nazi salutes and a swastika made of red cups‘ – Washington Post

Alejandro Escudé

Alejandro Escudé’s first book of poems, My Earthbound Eye, was published in September 2013. He holds a master’s degree in creative writing from UC Davis and teaches English. Originally from Argentina, Alejandro lives in Los Angeles with his wife and two children.