Tertulia

A fluid, expansive new collection from a poet whose work "dazzles with [an] energetic exploration of the Puerto Rican experience in the new millennium" (NBC News)

Puerto Rican poet Vincent Toro's new collection takes the Latin American idea of an artistic social gathering (the "tertulia") and revises it for the Latinx context in the United States. In verses dense with juxtaposition, the collection examines immigration, economics, colonialism and race via the sublime imagery of music, visual art, and history. Toro draws from his own social justice work in various U.S. cities to create a kaleidoscopic vision of the connections between the personal and the political, the local and the global, in a book that both celebrates and questions the complexities of the human condition.Praise for Tertulia:

“Toro’s poetry is exuberant and often comic, celebrating Latinx identity and culture in America even as it flags injustice and inequality at every turn.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Toro’s book successfully captures [the tertulia] spirit; it arrives with different shades and sections, unified by his risks (and successes) with poetic language . . . [E]xtreme focus and concision creates new visions . . . Awareness and vulnerability in this collection are complemented by empathy.” —The Millions

“[Toro’s] is a poetry of experimentation, musicality and political denouncement, a kaleidoscopic world full of powerful ideas that reveal one of the most exciting and inventive Latinx poets writing today.” —Morning Star (London)

“Icepick-perceptive . . . A rich, ambitious, and inventive observation of Latinx life in America.” —Library Journal (starred)

“Delightfully erudite . . . Whether dissecting notions of privilege or interpreting American horror movies as thinly veiled anti-Latinx propaganda, Toro wields language like a new technology, and his lyrics burst with earthy energy . . . [he is] a poetic phenom.” —Booklist

“The rhythmic latest from Toro is steeped in spoken word beats as it addresses such contemporary issues as immigration, gun violence, and income inequality . . . this is an energetic effort by a supremely original voice.” —Publishers Weekly

“As proposed by James Baldwin in 'The Creative Process,' Vincent Toro has taken up the artist’s mantle to expose & mirror society’s true conditions (& 'faces') to itself for the sake of liberation. You must bring your whole self to the reading of his work that explores the gamut of human error, evil, striving & triumph, while probing how complex, revelatory & potent language can be. These poems demand revolution in our ways of thinking, framing, creating & being. These poems don’t flinch or let you catch your breath, yet are clearly driven by a tenacious love & radical hope. Formally inventive, these urgent poems valiantly 'comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable.'” —Kamilah Aisha Moon, author of Starshine & Clay

“Tertulia is explosive; it detonates on all levels: tradition, comic, formalistic, political, and diaspora. There are not enough poetics in the world to define or categorize Toro’s work. You might flinch when you read these poems, so arm yourself.” —Willie Perdomo, author of The Crazy Bunch

“Tertulia struts around the edge of American civilization and the slant truth of history in poems saturated by an uninhibited discourse that engages the sublime and the low. His ekphrasis is cinematic, his lines symphonic. Toro makes testimonios stricken from public record known with his signature electromagnetic hand jive. This book excited and delights and provokes. Tertulia like it’s 1999!” —Carmen Gimenez Smith, author of Milk and Filth and Be Recorder


Praise for Vincent Toro:

“Toro’s poetry seeks to explore and embody the realities of hybrid identities resulting from these intersections . . . Stuck in a limbo between cultures, Toro pulls from both to create his own; Spanish and English brush against one another with no final assimilation.” —Scout Poetry

“Sugar-slicked, tightly controlled lyric shifts and clever formal constraints allow Toro to confront the difficulty of truth-telling without self-exoticization. Yet he remains able to find those truths: erasures of his own poems become fragmented stutters, then silence. These tonally dense, structurally varied poems often adapt Puerto Rican lyric and musical forms; this nuanced engagement with generational distortions of Taino heritage is also evoked in the blending of mythology with experience . . . Toro's evocative portrayal of intergenerational migrant realities reveals what it's like to be 'neither boundary / nor center / neither master nor serf.'” —Publishers WeeklyVincent Toro's debut poetry collection, STEREO.ISLAND.MOSAIC., was awarded the Poetry Society of America's Norma Farber First Book Award and the Sawtooth Poetry Prize. He is also a Poet's House Emerging Poets Fellow, a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellow in Poetry, and winner of The Caribbean Writer's Cecile De Jongh Poetry Prize and Repertorio Español's Nuestras Voces Playwriting Award. Vincent is a professor at Bronx Community College, is poet in the schools for Dreamyard and the Dodge Poetry Foundation, is writing liaison for The Cooper Union's Saturday Program, and is a contributing editor at Kweli Literary Journal.

On Battling (Baltimore Strut)

 

Gray cased in gray, shaken

 

            and truncated like timber,

 

            the bleat rouses all provinces,

 

calling each seed to surface

 

and insist on a redress. This trumpet

 

            of grief and homespun placards

 

            is met with gunmetal treads

 

bruising the fruit stands, mustard

 

gas suffocating the night's

 

            coruscation. As elbows

 

            lock before storefronts

 

to shelter shop windows

 

from the wallop of pitiless

 

            Kevlar, as flares browbeat

 

            boulevards and arsenals

 

are dispatched across the wet

 

gravel, a single shirtless

 

            seraph unfurls himself

 

            upon the tarmac. Flexing

 

faux leather, he gyrates, feather-

 

glides, thunderclaps, then jukes

 

            toward the 16,000-pound

 

            armored personnel carrier.

 

The bullying smog flinches

 

at his voltaic gait, as he peacocks

 

            into the boomerang hour,

 

            cranes his neck and shrieks 

 

to remind the intruder your tanks

 

are no match for my toprock.

 

Days of Being Wild (dir. Wong Kar-Wai, 1990)

 

            (Dissolve)

 

At the funeral of his birth the seamstresses sing matte-muted adagio

 

of rouge and torn hems. Oleaginous in both mane and vow. Bronze

 

king of ennui. She drifts across oxidized hallways. Her dress, the slug

 

line. Blue filtered lights and non-filtered cigarettes imbibe them.

 

CUT TO:          Closing credits. Exit. Pressed

 

            suit preens for role

 

            as auteur's unsung enigma.

 

One mistakes soliloquy for an affair. The other lives as an atoll, divot-

 

headed and bleak-lacquered. Boast-throated, he follows her like

 

a tracking shot that took the crew three weeks to stage. With days

 

drenched in despondent night, they mutiny through stasis, resist

 

CUT TO:          Again, that infernal clock.

 

            Train car hemorrhaging, roof

 

            top scaled. An ellipsis.

 

the throttling of the hours toward shopping carts glutted with ailment.

 

These railways run parallel but incongruent; one stretches toward

 

longing, the other hunts for omission. They sleep in the wind of radio

 

static. She sways for the unthreaded fishhook. He is a desert gawking

 

CUT TO:          Suitcase. Flower print dress.

 

            Unrequited knock at brass

 

            gates. Clock, grief-stricken.

 

in Dutch tilt at the inebriated street that spurned him. Reviled Coke

 

bottles. Bedroom slippers under the vanity caught in soft focus. 

 

 

Castigated like a dipsomaniacal gumshoe by the blunted edge

 

of minutes. Triangulated cravings asphyxiate them. Each tantalizes

 

CUT TO:          Pearl earring gifted to

 

            the second thief once

 

            reclaimed from the first.

 

the other through taciturn tides of withholding. Hell-bent on boring

 

the sea. But this mise-en-scne does not belong to them. This

 

is the viewer's Malebolge, a whorl of truancy spliced from B-rolls

 

of rambunctious prodigals who refuse to catch what they chase.

 

CUT TO:          Clock. Stairwell in need

 

            of serenading. Threat posing

 

            as flirtation. Opening credits.

 

            (Fade in)

 

 

Disco Ballistics

 

friday nights we prep for hot

 

skirmishes. take three to five

 

business days to primp and pick out

 

duds. shave. apply makeup. contact

 

all accomplices. hail our platoon.          

 

then a cab. breach the checkpoint

 

            with a wink. order a round of shots

 

            during tactical strike assemblies. stake

 

            out our first kill of the evening. flanked

 

            by chaise lounges and black lights.

 

            the beat drops in syncopation

 

            with our first village

 

raid. clink our cosmos like mac clips.

 

chuck disco ball grenades into middle

 

schools. flirt bump and grind. spawn

 

mushroom clouds in unisex bathroom

 

stalls. flick cigarettes sucked

 

to the filter onto the casualties

 

            we create. the styles we pilfer. smack

 

            lips in the mirror. launch glitter drone

 

            assassinations. snipe the bartender's

 

            digits. swipe high-security specs

 

            detailing an after-party in Kabul. drop

 

            big tips like food rations into Yemen.

 

barrage insurgents with shock and awe

 

of strobe lights and unsanctioned

 

gropes. engage in a war of attrition

 

with the dj. execute a fashion victory

 

march through the city square. retreat

 

to a downtown studio loft bunker. order

 

 

 

            a stop-loss for champagne brunch

 

            in the meatpacking district. debrief

 

            platoon on the briefs graves pearls

 

            buried and plundered. court-martial

 

            the sun for insubordinate conduct

 

            during the ceremonial walk of shame.

 

Cicatristes (Demo Version)

 

who tucked you in                who tucked

 

you                  brought you to the park

 

who tucked you brought you

 

lemonheads      baseball cards

 

marbles            who tucked you

 

touched you     brought you

 

the dark you feared       who touched you

 

when he tucked you              told you

 

it was supposed            to make you

 

smile                but you did could

 

would should    not smile

 

when he           tucked you

 

brought you      whittled you

 

into alabaster    who tucked you

 

in also taught you                 alphabet

 

and shared        his nerds with you

 

read to you       stole you stickers

 

before he          tucked you      

 

read you fed     you dark and now

 

you laugh because        it cauterizes

 

the conundrum the humdrum

 

to recall who gave         you the word

 

the sour stomach           who tucked you

 

slit and gauzed you       gave you

 

first aid and who           granted you

 

the means         to read it

 

Core Curriculum Standards: PS 137

 

tiled floor bedecked

 

sepia of potato

 

chip wrappers wet

 

newspapers rusty nails

 

gym shoe musk

 

ambling through unkempt

 

hallways fissure fresco

 

of soda stains

 

ailing fidget spinners

 

computer lab windows

 

swathed in shroud

 

of dollar store

 

electrical tape incorrigible

 

asbestos cavities hum

 

cancer anthems dipped

 

in chocolate fluorescent

 

lights dial supplications

 

above bulletin board

 

molting pastel homilies

 

to auto repair

 

diorama sprawled across

 

webster avenue crowing

 

 

                        ANCIENT CIVILIZATIONS

 

                        UNIT STUDY

 

                        EGYPTIAN GODS

 

                        AND PHARAOHS