Back when I used to be ghetto

South Side adopted the unwanted

café. Unsought browns from segregated tribes

brewing every tres leches cake & green lake

that has ever sobrevivido. Back of the Yards fucked Gage Park

conceiving nacimientos. Blacks, browns & golds sundry lineas

de ropa while whites and pinks linger on streets where they shouldn’t

be. Sra. Aburguesamiento, this is the first time I am introduced

to Ms. Gentrification. She performs reading teacher but reveals

racista. I am subjected to high-risk, poverty-stricken, ghetto ass

South Side. I did not know white anglo-saxon protestant mindset

todavia. WASPs stripped the bees of their homemade honey

like every dispossessed ancestor of mine & I am perceived

brown girl.         ¡Chinga tu madre!      ¡Hijos de la chingada!

Uncanny cries support deafening goodbyes as I was left

abandonada. No longer la chiquita cafecita as I confessed

“fuck you” to the amiss, colonialist, ignorant-stricken ass

& manifest Chicana.