RICHARD VARGAS

what friends are for
—(for Charlie Christenberry)

the voice on the phone is heavy with accent
i imagine a short dark woman who grew up
in one of those small Asian countries
our government totally screwed over

when i ask for you by name
she announces nonchalantly
you’re having your diaper changed
and perhaps i could call back in 30 minutes

i hang up stunned at how just last month
we were talking NFL playoffs and your bad hip
and now you’re getting wiped and cleaned
like a newborn baby

they’re calling it dementia
a polite word for not-quite-alzheimers
they found you on a side street
in San Pedro
after missing for a week
sitting in your truck
staring off into space
dehydrated and not knowing
where you were or how you got there

i recall earlier days at Paramount High School
the time we went to watch our basketball team
play our hated rival and we beat them good
we rubbed their faces in it during the entire game

and afterwards while walking to my ’66 impala
i noticed we were being shadowed by 5 guys
wearing Bellflower lettermen jackets
before i could bring it to your attention
you asked me if i had a jack in my trunk
when i said yes you told me to walk
to the rear of my car and open it
my mouth was getting dry and i could feel
my heart racing like it did whenever my
girlfriend gave the signal to unsnap her bra
at the drive-in, but this was different
as i opened the trunk and saw my jack
lying there illuminated by the eerie light of the parking lot
looking like Thor’s hammer waiting to be put to use
i turned around and they were standing there
breathing down my neck like a pack of hyenas
surrounding an injured animal
you were nowhere in sight
and i thought oh-oh
saw flashes of them taking Thor’s hammer
from my grasp and using it to beat
the bejesus outta me
i was a frozen deer
caught in the glare of
approaching headlights

then you came up behind them
and burst through
pushed me aside
grabbed the jack and
started swinging it

just the way i imagined

they jumped back
turned around and ran off
for reinforcements
then you slammed the
trunk shut and yelled
“let’s get the hell outta here!”

we laughed all the way to the local pizza joint
thinking about the close call we had
greeted our classmates as they showed up
with various cuts and bruises

but now i’m calling you back
and all i know is
this is going to hurt me
my friend
more than you’ll
ever know

Richard Vargas earned his B.A. at Cal State University, Long Beach, where he studied under Gerald Locklin, and Richard Lee. He edited/published five issues of The Tequila Review, 1978-1980, and twelve issues of The Mas Tequila Review from 2010-2015. Vargas received his MFA in Creative Writing from the University of New Mexico, 2010, where he workshopped his poems with Joy Harjo. He was recipient of the 2011 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference Hispanic Writer Award. He was on the faculties of the 2012 10th National Latino Writers Conference and the 2015 Taos Summer Writers’ Conference. Published collections: McLife, 2005; American Jesus, 2007; Guernica, revisited, 2014; How A Civilization Begins, 2022, and a fifth book, leaving a tip at the Blue Moon Motel, published by Casa Urraca Press in 2023. He currently is host of a monthly poetry open mic in Madison and is a reader of poetry submissions for a midwest art journal, Of Rust And Glass. He resides in Wisconsin, near the lake where Otis Redding’s plane crashed.