Hit Up on University Avenue

by Amy Soricelli

Santos plays graffiti tag deep among the wall downstairs after school.
He cuts school mostly in the alley with cigarettes and dried-out beer left out on the counter by
his last-night Uncles; their worn-down shoes clicking like music against the slick linoleum floors.
He wild styles in the early morning like Picasso in training - cannot whack his name on the front steps
cannot be less than the Up he is becoming.
He wears his props like a smile.
Santos learned beer early in the hot August Tuesdays - the novellas not loud enough to cover up the hate -
spraying himself clear across the bricks/his unfinished letters dying in the creases like lines on a face.
Santos has a sister with a butterfly tat circling around her ankle like a web - sexy she thought to herself -
in the greasy window apartment in the middle morning of the South Bronx.
Everyone asks her when she's going to finish something - he can't hear what.
The bouncy baby hands in her hair - on her face / she carries him on her side like a sack - his wet fingers stabbing into her pouty lips
all she can do to keep him quiet in the misty drag of the afternoon.
Santos has neighbors with their coughed-up anger/their lonely skinny cat prowling against his legs
while he takes out the trash.
Every day the same with Santos - his name sprayed like a message across the concrete - hitting up the side streets - tagging up
his block where the school was before it closed.
Everyone reading him in their eyes/ on the sweat of their skin.