"In a Vernacular of Speculation" by Alan Chazaro

Alan Chazaro is the author of This Is Not a Frank Ocean Cover Album (Black Lawrence Press, 2019) and Piñata Theory (Black Lawrence Press, 2020). He is a graduate of June Jordan’s Poetry for the People program at UC Berkeley and a former Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco. His chapbook, Notes from the Eastern Span of the Bay Bridge, is now available for order on Ghost City Press. He’s on Twitter and finally IG, too, @alan_chazaro.

---

In a Vernacular of Speculation


In 2021, a student told me: there’s incredible political violence while stepping

towards beauty. It sounded true. I wrote inside my notebook: what would happen

if authority was reversed? There’s a world beyond us that no amount of line breaks

can enjamb. I’ve tried. Maybe that’s hope. But this doesn’t answer anything.

In class, we asked how perspectives are disembodied & who receives evidence of 

happiness? We used phrases like this hits close to home, which is both

terrifying & comforting, since it implies we’ve had a body to shelter 

a home inside of even if that home is now being hit. I wonder: What is kindness

if not cyclical? What is poetry if not ceremony? These are topics we’ve circled

together. There are things I’ll never understand about certain hues of blue,

about loss. I don’t know if I’ve lost anything, really. Maybe this is a harmonized 

prayer about the things we have left. Maybe the world is burning, or maybe

the world was already burnt. It’s a matter of perspective & speculation. Nothing 

is really original these days. We sample and borrow forgotten oldies. President 

Biden was sworn into office. Someone Tweeted how Vice President Harris locks 

us up. Amanda Gorman joked she was a 60-year-old woman in a 16-year-old body 

when she transformed in front of our nation on live television. I never said

I’m trapped, but isn’t that what this sounds like? Confinement could be good

or it could be bad. It depends on where you stop your doom-scrolling. It depends 

on how far you’re willing to go. This isn’t a matter of politics or poetics. This is 

a room filled with people, with the ceiling about to burst. Maybe that’s freeing, 

or maybe it’s crushing. I want to write myself into gratitude. It feels distant but 

my fingers are still moving. When I got my stimulus check, it arrived as a prepaid 

plastic card with directions for activation outlined by Money Network®. It seemed 

treacherous somehow, but wasn’t. My dad doesn’t care enough & wants to know

if I’m watching the Warriors game. Truth is, I am. What else can I hustle right now

besides Steph Curry’s wrists? Ball harder is what competitors

shout when a game is getting out of hand. I guess it depends on what game & 

whose hands. I guess this about a shot clock & reading Ross Gay & being

present in this moment. In a few seconds, I’ll have to exit this poem & get

ready to Zoom. I’ll have to jump back into it like I’ve never left--

even when I’m already gone.
​