By Adolfo Guzman-Lopez

Salvador Valtierra preaches on the corner of Fifth and Broadway
The bus depot and crossroad for pedestrian masses
This is the corner where the stock market crashed
Where Reaganomics and its cranes revived a financial district
Booming with peep-show parlors
Residence hotels and adult bookstores

Now it’s the corner of ninety nine cent stores
And ninety nine cent lives
Lives lived out with stubby fingers
Clorox cracked skin
And tennis elbow
From pushing vacuum cleaners

Sal competes with
Incense sellers
Bow tie media moguls
Making the call

Hip hop pachuco taggers
Preach the gospel of sek, sueño, hem
Everyone wants to be seen

Except the maids
On their way back from five hours
Sweat bath house cleaning
The maids smell like pledge and lysol
They sit in mourning on a bench
Waiting for the bus

The maids look forward to making
Gourmet Mexican dinners
For waiting beaks
From stale tortillas
Seasoned with used bus transfers

Sal sees the pages of testament
Written on the side of a bus
Sal feels the power of the word
A soapbox director without musicians
Sal exhales faith
For anyone willing to stop
Sal stretches his arms to embrace all

The hip hop pachucos throw ride-by spit wads
From the half-opened windows of San Diego Transit
They wonder why Sal
Turns the other cheek

 

Adolfo Guzman-Lopez is a radio reporter for KPCC and is a founding member of the seminal Chicano poetry troupe Taco Shop Poets. He can be reached via Twitter and Instagram: @aguzmanlopez.