Manny Minaya: Venus Gospel
Photo: Joanna C. Valente
Venus Gospel 12
April on the two, in The Heights blossoming.
Cloisters planted a shy one with two rolling stone
parents. Rent from a city gentrified by our unwillingness
to grow. We ran circles around the same
lessons our parents breathlessly recited.
Desperately held on to our notions of what it meant
to be pretty. It be pretty outside,
if you really go outside,
but what’s bothersome is that pretty pretties
don’t really be on the outside sometimes.
April’s reserved for fools
that keep their pities outside, and reserve my
ugly voices designed to keep me inside.
MC Mario spat fireballs
at poisonous flowers to impeach Princess Peach
from a fire-breathing villain. He adopted what he learned
from nature, and I couldn’t remove the grates from
my bedroom’s fire escape. Then what was the use of going
outside? I had a crush on E, she was really outside, I guess.
All the blockheads felt her outsides, but
I knew her for her pretty pretties inside. From my windowsill
I felt April’s sixty-seven breeze and conversed with
pollen while I pressed buttons with precisions
off-beat to the kids playing suicide outside
my bedroom wall. We were ironic stalkers of the dark.
I never learned how to use
Morrigan properly. The commands were too
complex for my aching hands.
We resided on the second floor, a short hop
from the ground floor. I heard an ice cream truck outside.
Mami ordered me to buy her a chocolate-vanilla sandwich
and there was enough for
me to get myself one of two options—
vanilla swirl or sprinkled caramel. My palette
took a gander at the prospect of a choice; I was
really, really, really outside. I missed my fingers
around the grey PS1 control, my anxiety
racked my brain from the inside. And Mami screamed
for hers and I got to rush inside.
“You got nice eyes,” E stopped me to say.
“The type to turn to honey when the sun hits just right.”
I stumbled over my words when I tried to speak.
I really, really, really wanted to stay outside.
I wrote pretty just to know her pretty pretties inside.
Though she’d say, “Call my house but hang up if I don’t pick up,”
so my pretty pretties would mostly be kept inside.
I ingested Cloisters just to keep my thoughts inside;
marijuana green like Venus to keep the dark thoughts outside.
Though, I didn’t know I couldn’t write pretty pretties
without the negatives, so what was the use of staying inside?
My grandfather gifted me an Atlas on my eleventh birthday.
April in ‘02, outside of The Heights and rooted.
I got my feet and my pretty pretties outside.
And if I learned not to worry, my face would be pretty pretty outside.
Manny Minaya is a first-generation Latino based in New York City. Since 2005, Minaya has been performing as an actor and spoken word artist around the city. "Venus Gospels" is his first published poetry book. Minaya is currently finishing his English and Creative Writing degree at CUNY City College of New York.
