I drove for the first time in My Partner of the Aqua Net’s arms.
It was the first time I tasted beer. We chased storms in a ’72 El Camino,
my heart an overheated radiator. We shaped ferocity with our teeth and received
porn odors from a San Fernando Valley strip mall while sauntering
through a procession of bite. My Partner of the Aqua Net revs a stolen cement mixer
like a tectonic sound machine at the intersection of pozole and tacos al vapor.
Together we burned banks. Chewed birria. When I think of my Partner of the Aqua Net,
I consider mathematics: the cut and precision,
the abstraction that glorifies the burden breathing its name.
Manuel Paul López’s books include Nerve Curriculum (Futurepoem, forthcoming 2022), These Days of Candy (Noemi Press, Akrilica Series 2017), The Yearning Feed (University of Notre Dame Press, 2013), winner of the Ernest Sandeen Poetry Prize, and Death of a Mexican and Other Poems (Bear Star Press, 2006). He lives in San Diego, CA. TWITTER
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