Números anteriores / Back Issues

The first two issues came out before I knew how to make more than one page, so they were one very long page each, and when I moved everything over to this site they didn't survive the trip in one piece. (Long story. Involves a floppy disk and my little brother.) So instead of the whole issues, here are the tables of contents, and one piece from each that people still write to me about. If you sent something to Issue #1 or #2 and want a copy of your piece, e-mail me. I have it all printed out in a binder.

Segundo Barrio, Sábado
Damian E., El Paso · from Issue #1

Saturday morning on my street
smells like menudo and car wax.
The old man next door washes his Impala
like he's giving a baby a bath,
somebody's radio on a porch plays cumbias
loud enough for the whole block,
and the saints and the soldiers and the Virgen
painted on the wall of the projects
watch everything with their big painted eyes.

My mom yells my name out the window,
the whole name, all three parts,
which means I'm in trouble,
or means breakfast.

On Saturdays it's breakfast.

Kristin: Damian was fifteen when he sent this, and it was the very first poem anybody ever sent to PUENTES. I read it at my kitchen table and knew the whole thing was going to work.

Raspas
Tabitha L., Las Cruces · from Issue #2

In August the sidewalk is so hot that my little brother walks on the edges of his feet, like a crab, and complains the whole way, but he still comes, because at the end of the walk is the raspa man.

We have four quarters each. We counted them twice at home and once at the corner.

The raspa man has a white cart with a striped umbrella and a block of ice under a towel, and he shaves it with a metal scraper that goes shhk, shhk, and packs it into a paper cone with his hand. Then come the bottles. There are about twenty, every color in the world, lined up on the cart like a rainbow somebody melted. My brother always takes forever. He reads all of them out loud. Fresa. Limón. Mango. Piña. Tamarindo. Leche. Then he picks blue, every time, because blue isn't even a flavor, it's just blue.

I get mango with chile and lime. The raspa man says "¿Con chilito?" and I say "con mucho," like a grown-up.

We sit on the curb in the one stripe of shade from the cart. The raspa melts faster than you can eat it and runs down your wrist and you lick it off, and the chile makes your lips burn, and the ice makes your teeth hurt, and it is the best thing in the world.

Halfway through, my brother drops his. Blue, on the sidewalk, gone, sizzling a little.

He doesn't cry. He's seven. He just looks at it.

I hold out mine. He eats the rest of it, chile and all, with tears in his eyes from the chile, and says it's the best raspa he ever had, and I think it probably is.

Kristin: More people have written to me about this piece than anything else we've ever published. Three different people told me they had a little brother who only ate blue.