'The teacher calls us wet, dark names': two poems by Christopher Martinez

Terror(tory)

How long is long enough?

1. 15 at a fish restaurant
   old man who I serve
   sees to break me before
   he breaks into his meal.
   
   His knife skis through the fillet
   as easily as he says: spic.
   He is a relic, a monument
   people will keep propped up,
   swear will die someday,
   one day or one day
   
   I will break a statue
   first.
   
2. Badges look like stars
   on John Wayne's breast
   
   sorry Sheriff, you ain't
   my hero no more.
   
   after a mouthful of dirt
   you forget how the sky tastes.
   
3. Brown faces believing in imaginary numbers.
   Edward James Olmos covered in chalk—
   I remember wondering how long or how far infinity was and what dreams
   looked like on the other side of it.

4. My boss at Burger King hates Spanish speakers.
He's the third boss I've had make the point to tell me.
I'm 17.

5. In what I think is the basement
   or the boiler room
   is the classroom saw dust and children
   
   The teacher calls us wet, dark names
   pet names or names she cackles at—
   we miss the joke. Perhaps,
   we're too small to
   know what's funny but
   
   we miss our last teacher. The one
   whose name sounded big like ours.
   
6. You're thirty-four-years-old and your television
   is a blood splatter. One network
   swears you're overreacting, tells you your fears
   are plastic skeletons; another network screams
   you're in danger, always.
   
   You don't want to bring children to bear this world:
   plastic skeletons or not, they're bloody; they're scary as shit.
   They're all you've known.

7. I can go on forever.