Carlos Quinteros III is a poet with an occasional stutter, stumbling through language, living in San Francisco/the ancestral homeland of the Ramaytush Ohlone People. He is the managing editor and one of the poetry editors for The Ana, a literary magazine based in the Bay area.
Stick-up
There’s a robbery in progress
emptying
generations
of their pockets.
This stick-up has lasted
over four hundred years,
from carnivorous conquistadors
to championed soldiers,
to exonerated explorers,
to Hollywood confederate cowboys,
to malicious media
to perverted police
to pious professors
to piranha presidents
to predatory priests
to sadistic slave masters
to sanctified senators
to zombified civilians
The list of assailants
goes on, and on and on and on, and
this vicious cycle
—full throttle
hit-and-run
indigenous genocide
disappearing in the rearview mirror,
blood-hungry executives
power drunk—driving
with a country in the backseat—
no seatbelt, no concern,
while the rest of the imperialized countries
are tied up in the trunk.
there’s screaming,
there’s laughing
crying,
—laughing
choking
—laughing
begging
—laughing
gagging
—laughing
America has a death wish
running through
the tire spikes of its own law
—bullet fast
shooting through a nation.
This is Mad Max
except,
Fuck Mel Gibson.