Angel & Hannah by Ishle Park (best romance ebooks TXT) 📕

a plea

& plead guilty to some shit he didn’t do.

Really, how can a street kid prove

NYPD cop corruption? Hannah fumes.

She drops thousands of dollars, every penny made

from her new paralegal job, on his criminal case,

hires a balding lawyer who slides his hand

down her thigh after one lunch meeting & says,

Why are you blowing all your money on this thug anyway?

Come, have dinner on me. My wife is fat. I’m lonely.

Disgusted, she leaves & sobs quietly on the 7 train

home, feeling far from grown & completely alone.

Heat

Tonight, with Bella’s busted tv spewing sick light

over her bed full of kids,

Hannah wants to rip open any face, spill

outside, tear the iron gate off, take flight —

take the kids and run. Or just run.

To Aibonito. Jejudo. Hell. Heaven.

Sitting there, watching sweet Maria dart, cackle, sniff

white lines above the toilet, she knows. She’s not Soldier enough,

not Nun enough, not Flint or Dove enough for a lifetime of

poverty. She knows her skin will fleck off like lead paint,

she’ll burn, tender-fleshed, the young ones; she’s like the unassuming

heater pole in the corner, all saint-

like, innocent, but inside, seething — deadly.

She shoves open the bathroom window, lets out steam.

Lions

She’s astounded that he can get coke planted on him,

be arrested and picked up while on his rollerblades

on his way to Central Park ~ how cops can be

so racist & corrupt, but it’s no surprise to him.

He sighs. She pounds her fists on pillows as she practices tae kwon do.

That night, Hannah dreams that Angel is a golden~maned lion,

in a sparse valley with sunglassed hunters in squad cars. The valley

is full of starving, lithe, regal lions the color of midnight, ocean, fire, gold.

And the hunters are armed with rifles,

and packs of white baggies that they plant on the hunted lions’ pelts,

saying, This one was wild, Sarge, on drugs. Run, she tells him, run!

She’s a voice in da wind. Through a haze,

she sees zoos ~ filled with lions, who turn into snarling inmates.

She sees how captivity makes

regal souls calm, trapped souls crazed.

Run, she says, run, young lions!, as she stirs & wakes.

Moonlight

Even with thick-soled Timbs, Angel treads slow over Jerome’s

black ice, careful not to twist his ankle on his way home to Alma,

plate of arroz con pollo balanced on his palm. But three hooded men bump him

in their hustle to Highland Park. Chicken meat slips off bone;

rice & beans scatter like orange vomit into snow.

Angel’s alone, fuming. He rubs open the box cutter in his pocket,

thin breaths coming hard, fast. They eye him;

loom like one huge shadow on concrete.

A three-headed demon. What? You got beef?

The fat one sneers —

moonlight fills the gash in his

boar-neck. Shorty grips the muzzle of a handgun.

Angel backs off, stunned.

Is it moonlight in his eyes, or tears?

Shine (Angel)

she’s my shine…

in my dreams she’s always walking away, into the arms

of somebody richer, whiter, smarter, better.

but I can’t let her —

she’s mine.

with her, I can let go of all this

shit — uncurl my hand from a fist

to a hand that moves quiet as a whisper.

when I lie down with

her at night under

sheets, it’s my safest place — I lay down all

guns — I swear

there’s nowhere else I want to be.

just here.

streetlight blue on her black hair.

nothing like her, anywhere.

Hart Street

Angel loves this hushed pocket of night,

after his boys drift into sea,

after customers sniff and shuffle away

with a fistful of his two-bit white magic,

when window lights switch off one by one

like blown-out candles or stars,

when he’s alone on the corner of Hart,

under Jaquelina’s Christmas bulbs

half-golden in dusky hues,

air cool against his eyelids, he walks in half-

circles, does a two-step, sings dancehall reggae in

a high falsetto alone to his skinny self…

he lights a Newport, stares down the street —

it burns a blue line into infinity.

Chesa

Outside, a bloodorange moon

spills grief over Bushwick’s battered brownstones.

Same moon Hannah’s mother studies on her porch

before unscrewing jars, preparing meat, & rosewood plates for an early morning chesa ~

seaweed soup, pared apples, rice, incense for ancestors to inhale.

On this ripe harvest night, her father buttons up the Brooks Brothers suit

(he has no occasion to wear it except for funerals), to bow three times in the gray

dawn, circle smoke with a silver cup of water, inviting ancestors to drink.

She wonders now, staring at a cold, moonlit city, Would they claim me as

their own? Or am I completely alone? Where will I go when it’s my time to go?

To a blue graceland in the sky? Will I fly home to my uma’s land?

Will they greet me when I arrive?

She feels she could die or disappear, and no one

would notice, except the moon, a bloodshot yellow eye.

Cuban Link

When his mother dies, Angel clings to Hannah like seaweed,

even pulls her in the death-limo with his closest family.

He pawns his prized Cuban link necklace on Wanda’s staircase

to lace Hannah’s wrist with a ruby bracelet.

She takes off work for two weeks, sleeps

at his cousin Sady’s. He collapses in Hannah’s lap

in the back of the Q16 bus. One night in November,

letting guards down like cheap slips, she asks

him how many times he’s cheated. They’re sixteen.

His lips set in a grim line, he says,

Yo, don’t ask that question.

She leaves. He chases her barefoot and shirtless

down Jamaica Avenue. She throws off his bracelet:

it stays lost in a gutter, a soft red glint.

Water (Hannah)

(hold me, please)

We’re down to the marrow.

I kneel in the narrow

tub in front of Angel;

he lays limp — a broken

toy soldier, thin arms

battered by hot,

slashing water, down his stomach

in rivulets. I don’t know

how it feels to lose a mother,

anyone so close to kin.

All I know…is how to slow

this fall of water,

open my arms. Let him in.

Funeral Home

Why Hannah loves Angel is never more clear:

Flaco, Alma’s last husband,

who stole Angel’s Pepe jeans & new Sony camera

last time he was home, who