i live for my tap card

after Wanda Coleman’s “I Live For My Car”

my Tap Card’s an absolute necessity

in this city of cars where you come to know

people best by their willingness to stare down

oblivion, avoid clogs in the arteries of the LA freeway,

heart beat sync with each Metro stop in the city,

Eses and Viejitas and our East Hollywood Jesus

etched into bus windows and derelict payphones

graffitied over the lawyer-hussle billboards,

passing pink and purple hues of a Sylmar sunset

behind the Food4Less, a concession of foos

on a lowrider cruise caught in purgatory

behind some outta-townie dude’s busted right

turn signal and blackhole tinted windows

absorbing the Boulevard into the back seat.

//

soledad con carne is an intergalactic xicanx punk poet and co-founder of Cucatlicue Collective (I.E. x L.A.). They are a poet of the root that cracks the concrete on occupied Fernandeño-Tataviam land: otherwise known as the San Fernando Valley.