Virgil Suárez
El Santo Niño Chupatintas
We went to school together, shared
lockers in gym. He called me El Guapo,
not because of my good looks, but
because of my temper, my ability
to storm through this life, fist in mouth.
I couldn’t think of a name for him
until the day I caught him in a corner
of the locker room, sucking on a marker,
one of those thick, permanent-ink black
markers, and after he scribbled his name
on the walls, on the dented doors of so
many lockers, he sucked on the tip,
closed his eyes after gazing at this work,
then the name Chupatintas came to me
in a flash, the El Santo Niño Chupatintas.
The ink drinker. How fitting, I thought,
and when he saw me staring at him, he smiled,
dark lips, a row of blackened birds in his mouth,
a carload of words fluttering out his throat,
this tunnel so many enter and never see light.
Page(s) 180
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