Alan Chazaro

Joystick, Ending with a Question

“I dunno what was so funny or why i was smiling so hard that night but i never smile like that. Im tryna feel this good all the time” -Darrwel Torres, former student, on Facebook

If being boy is being broken and being broken
needs fixing, then let this joystick help us move
towards something better, and let better
mean the next level, and let the next level mean
victory—when we’ve outplayed the frames-
per-second speed we’ve been allotted
on our screens, because we’ve reached our goal
and finished this game, when we can look around our empty
living rooms at 2AM and say here it is, world, something
we’ve accomplished today, and even though no one is looking,
we will know that this is the opposite of hurt, that a Nintendo
64 is more than wires crammed inside black and gray
plastic, that boys who have conquered galaxies
in Star Fox have prolonged their own defeats if only
for another day of holding something sacred, like a controller
in our callous-thumbed hands, and what is this if not a cosmic form
of joy?

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Link, Hero of Kingdom Hyrule, Speaks Out on His Depression

There is a German word that means The feeling
in your fingertips. I don’t know how to say this
properly or how to spell it but I know the feeling

in my fingertips is glacial, is bladed, that my shield
cannot deflect self-doubt, that red clouds
suspend opulence. I sometimes hear the stars

calling out to me. I imagine they are searching for
a martyr to spitshine glory into them. Before breathing,
I learned about sandstorms, how they refused

to be held. I learned that storm is code
language for forward, that you mustn’t get swept
away. Away, such a slippery word. A way

or away, circle the better choice. Circle
what you’ve found to be false within you and
recite the ten definitions of hope. Follow

whichever rhapsody you must. Last week
I overheard someone say I once believed
I was the one starting my days. I know this

is not my truth. I no longer understand
the difference between slow-bleeding and the moon
​overturning. 
​

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Alan Chazaro is a high school teacher at the Oakland School for the Arts, a Lawrence Ferlinghetti Fellow at the University of San Francisco, and a June Jordan Poetry for the People alum at UC Berkeley. His poems have appeared in various journals such as BOAAT, Frontier, Huizache, Borderlands, Juked, and Iron Horse Review. He is most proud about his sneaker collection, his recent Pushcart Prize nominations, and being selected by 2017 Pulitzer Prize winner, Tyehimba Jess, for an AWP Intro Journals Award.