Jose Padua: Ten Sonnets for Electric Motherfuckers — The Second Decad
Karen, call the cops, he’s waiting by the curb
reading Colson Whitehead’s least popular book, I can smell him from
here, he’s wearing Pakistani musk, furrowing his frou frou eyebrows…
Jose Padua: What I’m Reading
History is layered, full of bones and ghosts, herself a storm of beau- tiful, frightening talent.
Jose Padua: Whether You’re Going Away or Going Home Depends More on the Direction of the Wind Than on The Time of Day or What State You’re In
thankful for the colors
blue, green, and the almost
red that appears in the half dark
near the afternoon’s end
Jose Padua: An Existential Traffic Update for the I-81 Corridor
The Burger King down the block
is open during renovations
and the man who
got shot several times
at his house a few streets away
on Saturday night
survived
Jose Padua: North Richmond Street, Being Blind
This place used to be
called Helltown and some people still call it
that, except at that precise hour when the sky
over the mountains is a perfect flinty lapis lazuli
blue, and the river is a woman named Edna with
the most joyous laugh
Jose Padua: A Brief Meditation on the Clouds That Hover Over the DNA Building in York, Pennsylvania
I always knew this was
where the instructions
were written
Jose Padua: Puñeta
Mother, you were the history
that never made the books,
the woman who fed us
chicken flavored with garlic
and ginger, sweet pork with
soy sauce and rice
Jose Padua: Those Years That Went Down
daytime drunks
still gather,
no longer hidden by
the ornament
of night
Jose Padua: With the Morning Moon Shining Down Upon Me through These Thick Walls
This morning I pounded
a nail into the wall
using a book
by Franz Kafka.
Jose Padua: My Favorite Bartender in New York City
My favorite bartender in New York wasn’t
some hot young thing with a sexy foreign
accent but a woman in her 60s who’d say
“Nice to see youse guys”
Jose Padua: I Am a Small Guitar
I am a small guitar in a large room on a Saturday
sometime after four when the last lunch guest
has driven home, beating the rain…
Jose Padua: A Routine Evaluation of My Accomplishments at a Late Stage in the Middle Part of My Career
These years of love
have sustained me far beyond anything
I ever could have imagined; a dusting to
an inch of snow overnight on cold asphalt
resulting in a two hour delay is all part
of the good life.
Jose Padua: A Short History of Monsters and Everything Else that Gives Substance to the Dream
in deference to the perverse dreaming
of the dwindling numbers of the upwardly mobile as
they trash and burn their merry way to their new luxury
condominiums decorated in beautiful pastel colors.
Jose Padua: Until the End of the Rain and the Sudden Demise of Endless Rainy Nights
let us gather our objects of grief like fierce weapons
against the kingdom of the ruling class
Vox Populi 