THE MASQUERADE OF CORPORATE CONMEN

Daniel Velasquez

Camp Imua is the dumpster behind the drugstore

Home to the scalpels, cigarettes,
And step-ins from the whores,
Including the applesauce I showered in.
My golden-brown fast-food fries
Became achromatized and rife with flies.
I became a walking boot;
A crutch for these retarded brutes
Who kept their keisters like
Shrek’s outhouse on Easter Sunday.

The hairy anvil looks gray today.

The anvil heaves torrential rainfall.
Torrential rainfall transforms
The everlasting spring floor
Into artesian green streams.
The gold in the streams
Etched calluses in the
Shape of X’s in my hand,
But my harrowing scars
Were the rims of beer bottles
For the leeches’ margarita
Even though at first
The leeches were my cats.

I read their cease-and-desist letters

Inside their book that has
Cotton and equine leather
Woven together in the hardcover.

“Thanks to you
Who worked for
This impeccable establishment.
Be grateful for your internship credit.
People, especially teenagers
Threw in the towel
By their first week.
Some people even
Threw others under the bus
To leave this program.
You wanted to meet
Skilled professionals,
Cook affordable and
Delectable meals,
And create paintings better than
Mr. Wood’s poetry.
We pulled a red cloth over you
In the bustling colosseum.
We understand you had to
Stick suppositories up twats,
And inject frog blood
Into open wounds,
But we are not at fault.
We’ve said this before
And we’ll say it again,
Thank you.”
 JONES
Daniel Velasquez

Jones entered the world in 1987, a rather large Indian baby, skin soft as marshmallows,
and had the weight of a house lamp. All grown up, he drives from corner-to-corner in Montana
as a professional truck driver. Every time he drives his truck down the freeway, He’s fed
information by using his peripheral vision. He loves his garlicky mushy naan bread and piquant
Indian curry as physical nourishment. Jones lives in the unpopulated, quiet, and frigid suburbs of
Helena Montana. He wears a button-up, solid red-velvet colored, long-sleeved shirt. He also
wears disheveled navy jeans and rock-hard Timberland boots. Jones takes care of a slimy, soft-
legged, and rocky turtle. His usual vehicle of choice is a navy blue camper van, and keeps a
toolbox in the bunk bed drawer. He calls the tools ``Thingymajiggers” or “Chimichangas.” My
secret handshake, fishing, hiking, and camping is the cornerstone of how I motivate and “deal
with” Jones.
 GREEN
Daniel Velasquez

An abandoned dilapidated high-rise home,

Sleeps on the bed of lingering vines and moss.
Antique, the house and the vines breathe muggy air.
A shallow pond sits next to the decrepit house,
And drinks the torrential rainfall welded together by the titanic surrounding forest.
Loud dogs pant like a marathon runner.
They breathed consecutively like cargo freight trains.
They try to strike a conversation with their fellow humans,
But their primal, underdeveloped vocal cords prohibit such words.
The sounds that come out are no more than boisterous barks.
The scent of a strawberry air freshener
Erupts from the inside rear-view mirror.
The scent flash floods the car;
Lotso Huggin’ Bear’s strawberries
Fills every crevice to the brim.
The savoury miso soup from Monkeypod
Sticks to the roof of your mouth like glue.
Every slithering slurp and sip
Makes you put your phone away
As every minute palatable detail immerses you in ramen.
Uprooted trees stiffen up like someone’s tendinitis,
Are sharp as daggers,
And durable as bricks.
The bark of the tree
Feels like the callus of an old person's hand.

BRICKS
Daniel Velasquez

We are the United States coast guard.

We stand at attention
Tomfoolery and stoicness
Are like oil and water;
They don’t mix.
We role model better than
The Royal Guards in Great Britain.
We are the tree roots
Who keeps the high-rise building cemented.
Our higher-up stories let us have the floor,
No pun intended.
The human skeleton
Envies our raw envies our sheer durability.
Sticks and stones can break their bones,
But can barely put a dent in us.
The hands of god can
Bring the tempestuous of storms,
And we’d be the last ones standing.
We walk with every step
Leaving cracks in the ground.
Every looming stride from our titanic leviathan legs
Are followed by loud THUDS!
Look into a brick wall.
Us bricks best represent
The human spine.
We are durable,
Connected with clay discs,
And harder than turtle shells.

DESCRIPTION OF A SURFER DUDE

Daniel Velasquez

His hair was sleek and brown, and his bangs resembled a fine wooden bowl. His face a
clean slate, devoid of acne, and a brown disc-shaped iris floats over a milk-white sclera. The lips
are barely visible to the naked eye, much like a cartoon character. Toothy grins and laughter are a
once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, but when he does, his flat, well-groomed teeth only slightly peek
out from under his delicate lips. He sounds like Batman's arch-nemesis when he laughs.
Everyone gets shocked at his unexpected shrill laughter. He stands straight and crosses his arms
not as a gesture of annoyance or displeasure but to show contentment. His gait is longer than the
average Joe, toes extending upwards until they relax into the insole of his sandal. His voice crests
manhood, deeper than the Mariana Trench, but will rise to the sea floor as a man.

He lives in my neighborhood, his house a pueblo home from the Incan and Mayan
civilizations. His scrawny gray truck is a one-of-a-kind compared to the world of Toyota
Tacomas; The army of 4x4s runs the town on the island of Maui. His girlfriend a blonde slender
woman who decorates her ankles and wrists with more bracelets than Shang Chi. The window to
the room he sleeps in covers up his messy room; mountains and piles of clothes sit on his soft
carpeted floor, and the inside of his truck is no different. The hallways of his house are shorter
than a banana tree sapling; every room connects immediately after opening the hardwood doors.
His kitchen room is a rectangle, with appliances, cupboards, the pantry, and his black rectangular
desktop on each respective side. His bathroom looks like mine, with two carpets for the sink
above the cabinets and the rounded rectangular bathtub covering a third of the bathroom’s area.