If you want to sing, sing

Felicidad por este meridiano

Nada más que reportar.

....***....

Cada vez me gusta más platicar con la gente en la calle. Es parte de lo que estoy haciendo aquí, algo que casi nunca había hecho. Es obligatorio. Tienes que aprender a hacer todo. Todo de nuevo. La filosofía de la Universidad ante la ciencia es tajante, hay que declararse completamente ignorante antes de aprender. Muchos tienen que releer cosas que han leído 4 o 5 veces, otros tenemos que ahondar en las mismas discusiones que hemos tenido los últimos tres años. Luego está la religiosidad con que se toman el oficio: dominar todos los pasos que implica contar una historia. Las mañanas de los sábados tomo clases de video y foto, me entrengo mucho, con la desvelada encima, porque a veces se asoma en los trabajos de mis compañeros un emocionante vínculo entre periodismo y poesía. Este es uno de mis primeros trabajos.

Inside the building: The Bronx from Jose Leyva on Vimeo.

Random readings

From The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2007:

Best American Names of Television Programs Taken to Their Logical Conclusions:

1. 24
2. 7
3. 365


1. Band of Brothers
2. Is That Why They All Have the Same Haircut?
3. Actually, the Ramones Aren't Really Brothers

1. The Amazing Race
2. I Thought This Show Was Gonna Be About Aryans
3. Oh

A History of Origami

by Bob Hicok October 19, 2009

two women in three days

cried on the green bench in the park

where i found a dollar

folded into a boat.

i thought it was the crying bench and cried

on the crying bench

when it became available.

i cried

by thinking of all the people

who’ve never broken a shop window, not the baker’s

window, the bead-seller’s,

who sells beads for purposes

i find hard to list: necklaces,

the hanging of strings of beads

in doorways, the owning of beads

just in case.

breaking a shop window with a piece of shale

the size of my heart, a piece of shale

on which i’ve drawn my heart, not my actual heart

but my feelings of my heart,

since i’ve never seen my heart,

would set something free.

i don’t know what that something is

but it would be free.

and my heart would have survived its travels

through glass, its jagged voyage

through my reflection.

you see now why i cried: none of this is real.

until i can answer yes to the cop who asks, is this your heart

among the ruins of your reflection?

i won’t be a man, despite what my anatomy

insists.

it insists

that i overcome a sense of resistance when i move,

that i move

as long as i am able to move, and when i am unable

to move, that i stop.

it would be free and look like a bird, an actual bird

or a dollar folded into a bird, a dollar bird

in a dollar boat.

which is to say

i believe origami arrives

when we need it most.

i can’t prove this but i can’t prove

you’re a good person though i suspect

you’re a good person.

you who opened the door.

you who tipped your hat.

you who ran into the fire and carried

the fire safely out.

Satuday, Fall

Pauses

I've been hearing those sounds for a while
intentionally,
Taking the tea bags from my cup
slowly,
to see the oily drops
fall
I've been taking a long breath
before the elevator closes its doors
while I stare at the alarm button,
one or two seconds,
Trying not to think in the things I won't say,
That's been the glue among this infinite chain of small crowns and toothpicks,
they way I snap my fingers.