Susana Gonzales
Susana Gonzales is an emerging poet who focuses on how the political is linked tightly to her personal experiences as a Mexican American lesbian feminist. She was raised in the Air Force, traveled much, and has grown to see the world through multiple lenses. She has been published in Poetica Review, and a soon to be published edition of Drunk Monkeys.
Street Art
Artistry reigns here on Delores Street.
The Muse of poverty
walks the night alleys inspiring
high art and a new classicism.
A dead chicken’s guts paint the sidewalk.
Its severed head lies nearby
like a scene from Bosch.
Around the corner the asphalt glitters
with a rainbow of broken bottles.
A burnt mattress leans like a sculpture
against the cinderblock wall—
blackened metal on ash
illustrating despair.
The guy dumping out his car trash
with the greasy painted face
becomes a performance art of private poverty
titled: This Mess of Unemployment.
Months of anguished cigarette butts
costar in a curbside finale.
Then dawn rises like a proscenium curtain—
unveiling gray trash splayed out in a wide-open arc
of desecrated arms and legs
there it lies—the New Vitruvian Man.
The dog strains to stop and sniff him
and I pull her leash hard.
Sheila-Na-Gig online 