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Favian Rodriguez
My Fragments
of Immortality
Things that don’t work
My stepfather gives me his beat up old “classic” Trans-Am.
He recalls driving around, T-tops down.
I nod my head, wondering what I’m going to do with it.
The steering column has fallen out.
“Smokey and The Bandit,”
he smiles proudly.
My mother, asks me to sell it, but I want to keep it.
She makes me sleep in the garage with the car for the next
year.
Things that don’t work
My first kiss. A chubby Mexican girl from art class,
Clara was her name. Soft eyes. Beautiful face.
She’s more experienced than I.
My awkwardness puts her off.
She never talked to me again.
This will begin a driving preoccupation,
which only patronizes
my fragment moments of immortality.
Things that don’t work
My best friend plays the lonesome hero, drunkenly on his
birthday,
demands to be taken to his ex’s place,
where both his and her best friend is staying for the
weekend,
so that he may profess his love to her before she leaves.
He promises a fight if I don’t drive us there. I nod my
head,
wondering what I’m going to do with him. We arrive. He
dribbles.
The girl asks politely for us to go home. He throws up on my
pant leg.
I… erased this part of the story due to mean-spiritedness.
Things that don’t work
I met her at a driver’s course. She had a rainbow of colors
in her hair and a bad driving record and a smile
that filled the tomorrow for the next seven years -for better
or worse.
My mother will later tell me “get on with life already
kiddo.”
My car dies while getting on with life. Waiting at a Colorado
bus station when a street
bum walks up asking, “You got a dollar?” “I only have these
last two left.”
“Well that’s one for you, and one for Me.” -I give him the
dollar.
“In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king” he walks
away, singing
-Sometimes it works out that way.
Rocks in
Your Shoes
Stealing shit is simply not worth the harass
Just pay the damn fee
Put your hands to the task
Say fuck you to that ass chewer’s indemnity
Or learn to live the tailored life of a criminal
Try not to ask yourself how long one goes on like this
There are a few things you should know
Such as the brutal exposed outline of battered fists
You’ll learn to sit in small dives where the drink worries for
you
The roaches have no philosophy
The perspective is flawed and your check is due
The haunch on your back is a corrupted sonnet of poetry
The dreams you once had perhaps will
Turn into rocks in your shoes
In the end, it will be you who has stolen the greatest dollar
bill
Your love for the world as convincing as it is
through
With
age, Favian has begun to write more than paint, but enjoys
placing the two toether. Painting and writing are the same to
him in a sense that -he understands the structure, syntax, and
the various genres to utilize.
February, 2012
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